I Forgot I Had a Sister-in-Law

This isn’t about my sister-in-law. It’s also not click-bait. Until a month ago, I literally forgot she existed.

The last time I saw her, she was wearing a wedding dress and exchanging vows with my brother. That was almost ten years ago. They settled on a small reception at a friend’s house. Guests drank champagne in a living room that looked like it was decorated by Laura Ashley herself, while I excused myself to sneak shots of tequila I had stashed in the fridge behind a fruit tray. They cut the cake (I didn’t eat it.) The majority of the time I hid in the kitchen, pacing in front of the fridge like I was guarding a moat. “Is something wrong with you?” my mother asked under her breath, not so much out of concern, but irritation. “I’m just tired.” Only, I had a sneaking suspicion this was the last time I would see any of them ever again.

Being raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was very lonely. That’s not the case for everyone. Some come from large families. Even if they, too, are indoctrinated from birth, they still have siblings to play with. They have cousins in the neighborhood, and Grandma lives two blocks down. My father’s side of the family were “believers”, but may as well have not existed. They lived a few hours away in West Texas and made their one token visit in the eighties (frankly, I think it was an aberration.) My mother’s family were New Yorkers, none of them Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the ones who were lived on the other side of the Atlantic and talked shit about us in German at the dinner table. 

What does this have to do with my sister-in-law? I had decades of practice detaching myself from people. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was taught to avoid my classmates, coworkers, and yes, even blood relatives who didn’t “serve Jehovah.” That left me with a small pool of forced associates at the Kingdom Hall, and an estranged brother whose neck I would hug for the last time on his wedding day. I don’t blame him. It couldn’t have been easy being a 16 year-old guy with a sister in kindergarten. The age gap didn’t help, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses managed to drive the final wedge between us, removing what little semblance of normalcy I had always longed for.

My hunch was correct. I never saw them again, because I flew back to North Carolina, realized I was in a cult, and left shortly after. This is not what I want. No one wants this. But these are the rules: you leave, you’re dead. My brother’s wedding day was the last time I saw my mother, eyes bloodshot from orchestrating the day’s festivities, but relieved the wet blanket was going. I said goodbye to my father, stomach rotund and content. And, I said my final goodbye to my sister-in-law, beaming and beautiful on her big day. I can’t save her now.