I was reminded tonight, by a call from my mother, that tomorrow is an anniversary. The fact that I needed reminding devastates me.

One year and a few hours ago, my sister was in a hospital bed, complaining of pain.

She was so thin and drawn even weeks before, when she turned to me with a look of dismay and said she didn't recognize the face in her mirrors anymore. There is enough of my father in my character -- or lack thereof -- that I could not tell her how she looked to me; all dignity and grace and strength, a sister who had become a stranger and then a sister again. I could only sit there, dumb, with tears in my eyes.

Near the end, she told my mother that I looked embarrassed to be around her. I wish I could have told her that I was embarrassed of us... of my mother, my father, and myself. We had failed her for so long, in such sweeping totality, and now... no matter how devoted we could be... in that place, at that time, we, shamefaced poseurs all of us, could only aspire to ask her forgiveness.

We had been wholly absent from each other's lives for so long, and abruptly she was the absolute focus of my world. Nearly every day for a month and a half, the only reason I existed on this earth was to make her life easier, in any way I could. Often, when the day was done, I would seek solace in a bar, alone in a dim corner, clutching a sweating tumbler so nobody would see how I wept. Twice, I would slink away for a weekend, ostensibly to attend to work, but in truth, I needed the time just as much to repair my shattered senses. What a fool I was, to throw away those hours as if they were there to waste.

She made me promise to live every day as if it were worth living, and with a few modest exceptions, I have failed to live up to that promise. I am a plodding sort of person, dross to her silver, and though I try I could never achieve her facility with life. Not merely surviving, a balancing act of biology, but sincerely being alive. Not pushing one's way through the day, head down and eyes half shut, but pulling everyone along with you, encouraging, demanding, that they share in your joy.

I have always maintained that the cancer took the only one of us who truly knew how to live, and the truth of it is brought home today. I would have traded places with her in a heartbeat, and the world would have been far richer for the exchange. I write that with absolute conviction of its truth, and I can only hope to restore some measure of that balance in the years left to me.

One year and a few hours ago, I was asking for more painkillers for my sister.

A doctor and a nurse accompanied me back to my sister's room, and they made it clear that any more would almost certainly place her in a coma. My sister had told me earlier that the only thing she feared was the pain. She accepted, even welcomed, the prospect of oblivion, but the pain terrified her.

Anything, I said. Anything to give her peace.

One year ago today, I brushed a strand of hair from my sister's forehead, and kissed her good-bye forever.

It haunts me still.