My Dear Cousin Is Still An Angel at My Side

Jackie and Natalie after their dance recital

This is Natalie’s story, as told by Jeanette Summers. Our “Opening Our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences with loss. By sharing these experiences publicly, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief and ultimately aid them in their healing processes. In this article, we tell the story of a 12-year-old girl and the loss of a beloved cousin. 

Jackie was more than my cousin. She was my best friend.

Our birthdays were one month apart, so when I say that we knew each other before we were born, I don’t just mean that our spirits had met in hundreds of other lifetimes;  I’m speaking literally.

I imagine our pregnant mothers sitting across from one another over lunch or tea, making plans for their soon-to-arrive baby girls — bellies round and heavy with Jackie and I inside, already keeping each other company. Maybe I was kicking, sturdy and rambunctious as I turned out to be. But I could never imagine Jackie doing such a thing. She was always delicate as blown glass, a butterfly whose papery, painted wings practically tore as they caught the wind.

“…she was always delicate as blown glass, a butterfly whose papery, painted wings practically tore as they caught the wind”

Jackie was born with a severe diaphragmatic hernia that caused her intestine to climb into her chest, stunting the development of one lung.  The same genetic defect took one of my mother’s other children two days after he was born. But Jackie survived.

As an infant, she was the youngest living human to undergo successful lung transplant surgery. But when Jackie was 5, the foreign organ breathing air through her tiny body began to fail. The doctors had no choice but to remove it, leaving her with a single lung for the rest of her life.

Since Jackie and I couldn’t play rough, we spent a lot of time indoors. We’d  act out skits and put on puppet shows, or go out to dinner with her Nana and color on the backs of paper menus. We devoted countless afternoons to drafting plans for our joint future. It was settled: when we grew up, we would to move to Paris (Jackie’s favorite city) where we would share an apartment and become famous fashion designers.

“It was settled: when we grew up, we would to move to Paris (Jackie’s favorite city) where we would share an apartment and become famous fashion designers.”

I was the devilish little troublemaker on my cousin’s angelic shoulder, always trying to entice her to do things like sneak away from our mothers and hide in the clothes racks while shopping. But Jackie couldn’t bear to be anything but honest.

One day, our mothers took Jackie and I for a car ride. Jackie’s mom – my Tia Teresa – handed Jackie an Eggo waffle saturated in a slimy film of butter. It was all part of a ritualized effort to pack weight onto her daughter’s diminutive frame.

“You have to eat this,” Teresa said.

Jackie stared at the waffle, bit her lip, and swallowed.

“Don’t eat it,” I said in a sharp whisper. “It’s gross. Throw it out the window!”

Jackie’s eyes grew huge and shiny; she was nearly trembling.

“I can’t,” she said.

When Teresa got out of the car to run a fast errand, my mother turned around.

“What’s going on back there?” she asked.

“Jackie’s waffle,” I said.

Jackie and Natalie

My mother took one horrified glance at her niece’s grease-laden snack and said, “Give it to me,” and shoveled it into her mouth.

Minutes later, Teresa came back to the car. A dense, uncharacteristic hush hovered inside. “Jackie, did you eat your waffle?” she asked.

“Umm,” Jackie stammered, fidgeting in the backseat. She turned her gaze to me as if to ask, What should I say?

I glared at her. Hard. Just say yes, I thought. Lie. Come on. Just do it.

Teresa looked at Jackie and then turned to look at her sister.

“Your aunt ate it, didn’t she?” she said.

A beat of silence registered, and then all four of us erupted into laughter.

One afternoon, about a year before she died, Jackie was the one to seduce me into a bit of mischief-making. This was truly an anomaly – the first, last, and only instance of its kind.  Tia Teresa warned us not to eat anything that might spoil our appetite for dinner, but Jackie decided to sneak a litre of strawberry ice cream upstairs. We attacked it — with two spoons — straight out of the carton, our bellies swelling with smooth, sweet, frozen pink as we laughed and whispered. We were as high off of our pointed disobedience as we were off the sugar.

“One afternoon, about a year before she died, Jackie was the one to seduce me into a bit of mischief-making.”

But it was a warm day and the ice cream melted fast — we spilled our liquefied dessert everywhere.  Ten years later, I can still see and feel it all with starling clarity: the Pepto-Bismol-pink-stained carpet, the rush of panic rising in our chests as we hurried to scrub it clean before anyone saw.

Devastating News

I knew that my cousin was small and fragile, but I never grasped that her medical issues might someday threaten, let alone claim, her life.

Jackie and Natalie

Sometimes, when we talk about Jackie, my family says things like, “We always knew that our time with her was limited.”

The thing is, I never knew that.  No one ever told me.

One February afternoon when Jackie and I were 12, I was playing at a friend’s house when my mother came to pick me up early.  Her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

Jackie had been on a ski trip with her Nana. I was supposed to go with her, but for reasons that I now can’t remember, I couldn’t.  Overnight, Jackie had suffered an unexpected intestinal blockage and went into septic shock.

She was in a coma.

Over the four-day period that Jackie lay unconscious, I sat vigil in my bedroom. I refused to go to school.  I looked at what must have amounted to hundreds of photographs of us together, and prayed harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life. And I truly believed that there was no way my best friend would be taken from me; what kind of God would allow for such a thing to happen?

So when my mother walked into my room to tell me that Jackie was gone, she didn’t have to speak.  I felt it instantly.

“Over the four-day period that Jackie lay unconscious, I sat vigil in my bedroom. I refused to go to school. “

I sank to the floor, beating my fists against the carpet and howling, “It’s not true!” My mother tried to squeeze me to quell my body’s convulsions, but they wouldn’t stop.

After that, I barely spoke. For three weeks, I couldn’t cry. I would only sit in front of the television, my limbs all but dissolving into the furniture. It felt unreal.  I felt unreal. Everything I saw reminded me of my cousin.

Weeks after Jackie died, my Tia Teresa gave me Jackie’s digital camera. I must have watched the video recording of us dancing in our new pajamas over a dozen times in a row. When I turned the camera off that night, something inside me powered down.

I refused to accept any more of my cousin’s belongings, and could hardly bear to look at pictures of the two of us together for almost ten years.

A Children’s ink article featuring Jackie’s lung transplant surgery

Soon after Jackie died, I started spending more and more time with my Tia, taking trips with her and sleeping over at her house every other weekend.  To this day, Teresa and I barely ever speak of Jackie’s death directly. I feel incapable of crying in front of her. But we don’t need to speak or cry together to know that we’re the only two people on Earth who fully understand the emptiness of living in a world without Jackie.

It’s been a decade. And I still think about her every day.

On my flight to Paris to study abroad, I couldn’t stop crying. It was partly because I knew Jackie would be so proud of me — but partly because she wasn’t coming. Every milestone in my life is imbued with this duality; I never know whether to be happy or sad.

Jackie has appeared in my dreams only four times since she died. In each dream, we’re in a different place, but she’s always very young – no older than six or seven. She never speaks. She just sits in my lap, smiles, and pets my hair.

In these dreams, I’m acutely lucid. I know that my time with her is limited. I always think, “Oh my God, Jackie – you’re here.  You’re visiting me.  When are you going to leave?” And I know that if I take my attention away from her for a split second, she’ll be gone again. I draw on every reserve I have in me to hold onto the moment for as long as I can.

Jackie always believed in God and angels. Even her diaries are full of prayers. But Jackie never prayed to feel better, get stronger, or live longer. Instead, she prayed for her family.

“But Jackie never prayed to feel better, get stronger, or live longer.  Instead, she prayed for her family.”

I was furious with God after he took Jackie from me and have always thought that if angels exist, they probably have better things to do than hang around Earth, listening to our desperate requests.  But a part of me senses Jackie’s presence unmistakably, and sometimes believes that she truly is my guardian — my protector.

I carry her inside me, using her as a compass. I often think, What would Jackie do right now?  What would she want for me?  What would make her proud?

Jackie steers me away from harm and makes me better.  

In this way, she is still at my side every day — just as I always imagined she would be.