When I was a child Easter was probably my very favorite holiday. Much less stress than Christmas, but a lot more candy. But my very favorite part of Easter was the egg hunt. At our house we colored eggs the night before and the Easter bunny hid them for us (worries of food poisoning be damned). Our Easter bunny was a FANTASTIC egg hider and it usually took my brother and I quite some time to find all the eggs. It wasn't ever a competition, it was a collaborative effort to figure out where they were each year. Then, once they were all found and counted, the real fun began and we would take turns hiding the eggs for each other. All day long we would keep it up. It's one of my best childhood memories of what it is to have a sibling.
In 2009 Easter was on April 12th. One day shy of the one month anniversary of Em's death. I have only the vaguest recollection of the day. I remember having the craziest thoughts the night before that when I woke my girly would be back and would be resurrected, why couldn't she be the second coming? I remember feeling guilty that we had opted for cremation because maybe if we hadn't she would have been reborn that day. And then, I remember being pissed off the entire day that Jesus was resurrected but that my kid was still dead.
But mostly what I remember is being heartbroken for my living child. My beautiful, first born, girly who had been the best big sister from the moment Em was born. She spent the entire day begging her father and I to re-hide eggs for her. My 13 year old girl was missing the sibling interaction in such a visceral, concrete way that it broke my heart and made me realize for the first time that she had lost even more than I had.
I still have a child, she no longer has a sister.
