november 20, xxxx

She looks like me, I think. Thick, black hair parted to the side bearing her calloused, violin bow fingers, perfectly even skin from a lack of sun exposure, small, delicate features taken from a mother who looked too young to be in her late forties, too conventionally foreign to be regarded as anything but exotic. She looks like me, I think, in spite of the obvious height difference that dictated the loose fit of my hand-me-down jeans and sweaters, in spite of the more mature, filled frame that gave the impression that we were more than only one year apart in all of our years of schooling together. In spite of our shared bathroom and consequent shower utilities, she was the softest, most lemon-and-sage-smelling person I'd ever come into contact with -- though arguably that was a given, considering that she was the only person I knew who bothered to go through handfuls and handfuls of lemon and sage lotion by the week -- and even now I can imagine the whiff of her perfume-like soap and shampoo just barely passing me by, unnoticed and caught all at once in her constant urge to hurry here, there, anywhere. Always rushing, rushing, rushing. The pudgy underside of a chin that I remember so fondly had already blossomed into that of the practical, busy young woman that I'd always known she would become before I'd graduated to a higher schooling, its definite, nearly sharpened lines demanding attention and respect from its viewers. She'd look more like herself if the rest of her appearance were formed to follow suit, I'm sure. That practical, busy topknot had been too carefully undone to cascade past her shoulders against the cotton lining of the casket, the simple daily application of medicated lip balm elevated to another level of beautification: cheeks a false, rosy pink, lips and eyes nearly drawn on in an imitation of what our mother had always wanted her to look. My sister beneath the glass looks a little too much like me now, with femininity pasted upon her features like a child playing grown-up in her mother's clothes, and I can barely force myself to think of the body as someone who had once held so much vivid, raw life force within her veins. Enough to shock a post-cardiac arrest victim to life, were she still in the working condition to perform such actions. But this stranger beneath the glass carries neither the scent of lemon and sage lotion, nor the telltale callouses of a habitual musician upon her fingertips, nor the plain and undone features of one who had spent innumerable hours poring over medical textbooks and research papers, dozens upon dozens of factoids that she used to tell me before the pills, before the smoke.

I stare down at this caricature of my sister glumly.

My mother -- our mother, actually, in spite of the fact that she had all but abandoned her after my sister's ventures into unspoken things past her dictated medical things -- clasps her fingers around my shoulders in the duration of a moment before releasing me, an intended gesture of comfort that does anything but. Isn't she lovely? She seems to whisper, smiling tearfully. Isn't she beautiful? She traces the glass in an impression of my sister's perfect, demanding chin before pausing over the gash hidden under the blue dress, thoughtful. My sister had gone through nearly a decade of medical school; she'd known where to injure herself quickly and efficiently with as a little of a chance of being saved as possible. My mother murmurs something again about the pleasing aesthetics of her formulated appearance again, and I quash the hint of anger and annoyance that threatens to rise in my chest. I had been the one to find her, after all. Even on the bathroom floor she had looked more like herself than this beauty of a dead body lying against cushioned slats.

Breath in. Breath out. There is absolutely no possible way, I tell myself, that this beautiful stranger within this beautiful box could have ever been anything close to resembling my sister.