My little sister, Amanda, was beautiful. She always had a smile on her face and a glimmer in her hazel eyes. She was bright, and a hard worker. At 19, she was majoring in communications at East Carolina University, an ambassador for the school and a star singer in the University Chorale.
I swore I was never having children but would have a lot of dogs. Amanda joked that I could take care of her kids while she toured as a famous singer. That was our plan. But in the summer of 2003, that plan ended. Amanda was killed in a car crash.
In the dark, painful time that followed, friends would claim that Amanda had come to them in dreams with rainbows or butterflies or feathers. It was God’s way of letting them know their friend was all right, they said.
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I didn’t believe any of them. Why would Amanda visit everyone else but not her only sister? Why wouldn’t she reassure me? It didn’t make sense. It only made me angry. Why didn’t I get a sign?
For the longest time, it felt as if Amanda had just gone away and could come home at any minute. I’d be out at crowded places and think I saw her—a glimpse of her smile in a sea of faces. But it wasn’t her. She wasn’t coming back.
I did everything Amanda and I talked about doing, alone. I married the love of my life, adopted our first dog, Tyson—affectionately called Tysee—a smart, sensitive boxer. Maybe it was Amanda’s influence, but I changed my mind about having kids. Seven years after Amanda’s death, my husband and I had a little boy, Evan.
Evan gave me a kind of joy I’d thought I would never find again after losing Amanda. He grew fast and was whip smart. He developed a great vocabulary thanks in part to a game we liked to play, where I would point to something and he would say its name.
But with every new memory we created, I felt Amanda’s absence. I imagined Amanda singing songs to Evan, teaching him her favorite nursery rhymes. His bright smile and love for music reminded me so much of her. He’d never know the person his aunt was, the way she lit up the world.
I’d push the thoughts away. I couldn’t even say her name around him. He knew nothing of Amanda.
Just before Evan turned two, Tysee developed a tumor and I had to say another wrenching goodbye. Evan asked where Tysee had gone. He wasn’t ready to know about death. “Tysee’s gone away for a while,” my husband and I told him. Evan seemed to accept that.
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One afternoon, we returned from a visit to my parents’ house and Evan and I played our game. I pointed up. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Sky, Mommy,” Evan said, “That’s sky.”
“Good! What do you see in the sky?”
Evan paused, looked around. “Birds! Tweet! Tweet!”
“Yes, Evan! Birds are flying. What else?”
I unloaded the car while Evan’s eyes searched the sky. There were lots of things to name. Clouds, the afternoon sun, an airplane, bumblebees. I glanced back at him; his little round face gazed upward.
“I see Manda Tysee.”
I froze. Maybe I misheard? “What do you see, sweetie?” I asked.
“Manda Tysee,” he repeated. “Manda Tysee in the sky!”
I was speechless. My husband and I never talked to him about Amanda, or heaven. Who else could have? My parents?
I phoned Mom and Dad that evening. Had they mentioned Amanda around Evan?
“A few days ago,” Mom said. “He pointed to a picture of Amanda and asked who she was. We told him she was your sister, but not what had happened.”
“Are you sure?” I pressed. “What about Amanda being in heaven? Or Tysee?”
“I am positive, dear. We never said a word.”
Evan and I still play our game. But now I look up into the sky too. And I know who to look for.
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