People Who Inspire Me: My Sister

August 10th is a date that will forever be etched into my brain. That is the date that a piece of me died. It is the day my sister died. You are going to have to forgive me. As long as I manage to keep this blog going, I will post something about her on this date.

August 3rd, 2006, my kids and I were at a friends house practicing Kuntaw. My cellphone rang. It was my wife, Anne. She said that Kim had been in an accident. So, we packed up rushed home and I called my brother. Tom, told me that Kim had been struck by a car. (This may give you a bit of insight into my rant a while back about drivers and pedestrians.)

She was standing next to her car getting ready to enter it, when a car came along and hit her. The other driver wasn’t under the influence of anything, she just wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. Kim was thrown forty feet and landed on the pavement. Kim was flown to Grand Rapids, the nearest trauma center. She never regained consciousness. Seven days later, my family had to make the most difficult choice of our lives. Kim had made it very clear in her will that she didn’t want to be kept alive artificially. The doctors convinced us that the woman that we knew and loved was gone. We had her taken off of the life support system.

My sister was one of the gentlest people I’ve known. She had a great love of animals. Animals of all kinds, but by far her favorites were cats. When we were kids, there were always cats around—inside and out. They were her friends. Whenever she needed comfort she turned to her furry friends. For most of my childhood, and a good portion of Kim’s we lived on the outskirts of a small town in Michigan. We didn’t live on a farm, but our house was surrounded by one. The farmer who owned our house liked having the cats around. They controlled the mice. At one time between us and the neighbors there were as many as thirty cats around. You walked out the back door and you could always see them. Admittedly my older brothers didn’t like the cats much, but Kim was always going to have her pets whether they liked it or not.

And it wasn’t just cats. We always had animals around the house. There were mice, dogs, and even a rabbit. And before her death at her beautiful home in the country, she was feeding the deer and even giving them names.

When Kim was in high school was when she had the first of her favorite type of cat, a Siamese cat. I don’t remember if Kim or mom named her. Her name was Susie. There have been many Siamese cats in Kim’s life since then. I don’t even remember all of them, there was Chessie, Cassie, and the most recent, Carrie. Do we see a pattern here?

Kim had more skills than taking care of cats. She was very creative. Art was a favorite subject of hers. She was also a very good actress. She didn’t do much acting, but there was one role that she was born to do. In high school they performed “The Diary of Ann Frank.” Kim had the starring role. I was only nine or ten at the time, but even I saw how perfect she was for the part. As a child, Kim even looked like her. It was brilliant.

When I was in college at Eastern Michigan, Kim was living in Ann Arbor and we both were working at the Forensic Center. We spent a lot of time together during those years. We even shared an apartment for a couple of years. It was very much like “The Odd Couple.” I was Oscar to her Felix.

Kim was very petite, and seven years older than me. She was 5′ 2″ and maybe 100 pounds. I’m 6′ 4″ and about 200. Kim loved to introduce me to people as her “little brother” and I always called her “big sister.”

Over thirty years ago, in the summer 1976, Kim and I decided to buy new bicycles. We went out shopping together for those bikes. We bought matching Motobecane Super Mirages. They were beautiful bicycles. More than thirty years later, that is still my only bike.

I have one more short story to tell about Kim. I was and still am a big fan of the Muppets. Kim knew that. One year she got me this. For those of you who don’t know, he is Mr Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street. Now “Snuffs” as Kim liked to call him wasn’t dressed like this. But I’ll get to that in a moment. He rode around in my car with me all of the time right between the seats. Kim decided that he looked too plain. The first thing she did was make a cowboy outfit for him for my birthday. He had a cowboy hat, a bandana and holsters with guns. It was amazing. The next year, was the year that Superman came out with Christopher Reave. So, for my birthday that year, Kim made him a Superman outfit. The next year was when she made this Tiger’s uniform. It had a batting helmet, glove and a little bat that she made. There was a Santa suit, and even a chicken suit. Then I moved to California, followed by Chicago, and marriage. Snuffs ended up in a box in the basement. Time went on.

Those are some of my fond memories of Kim. I love you big sister, Snuffs and I miss you very much.