My Little Big Sister

by Donna Poole

Eve was only seven years old when I was born, but Mom gave her the task of taking me for long walks in my baby carriage. Eve hated it, not because she didn’t love me, but because I was a chubby baby, and all her friends laughed at how fat I was when she walked by.

Mom said I talked early and was potty trained before I was a year old, and that was Eve’s job too. Eve went by her given name, Eva Lee, back in those days, and I couldn’t say that, so I called her “Wee Wee.” She had to watch me while I played outside, and when I needed to use the bathroom, I hollered, “Wee wee, Wee Wee!”

Her friends, who played with her while she watched me, found that even funnier than my chubbiness, and poor Eve was mortified.

I don’t remember any of this. Nor do I recall taking her porcelain doll off her bed, the doll I’d been told not to touch. I was at the top of the stairs and Eve at the bottom when she saw me carrying her doll.

“Donna! You put my doll down right now!”

I put it down. I threw it down the stairs. I’m glad I don’t remember Eve’s tears when she saw her favorite doll shattered in pieces.

My birth turned Eve’s life upside down in many ways. Mom often told us she’d never planned to be a mother; her dream was to become a lawyer. That dream didn’t come true, but she loved her job working outside the home when Eve was little. Raising Eve fell to Grandma Peters, Mom’s mother, who lived with us. Eve adored Grandma.

By the time I was born, Grandma was getting older and not feeling well. When Mom was at work and Eve at school, Grandma Peters cared for me, but she let me fall out of my highchair once too often.

“June,” Dad said, “I married you, not your mother, and you need to quit your job, stay home, and take care of this baby.”

Mom quit her job to take care of Eve and me, but she wasn’t happy about it. I don’t imagine Eve was thrilled either; she loved having Grandma care for her.

I have only one memory of Grandma. I remember a lady in a twin bed pushed up against a wall. She had her face turned to the wall, and she was lying very still. People were crying.

Eve said that memory was the day Grandma died of cancer.  

When I was older Eve told me, “The day Grandma died, my world fell apart. I felt like I’d lost the only person who’d ever really loved me.”

Of course, Mom and Dad loved her, but Grandma had been Eve’s best friend, the one who’d held her, wiped her tears, and shared her joys.

My sister Mary was born when I was fifteen months old, and Eve’s workload grew. When I was five our baby sister Ginny was born. As soon as she was old enough to sit up in a big tub, Mary and I gave her baths. I’m sure Eve was glad we were old enough to help!

When storms thundered and lightning slashed night skies, Mary ran and crawled in bed with Eve. I felt bad because she didn’t come to me; Mary and I were almost like twins. Deep down I knew why she ran to Eve; that’s where we all felt safe.

I was a disobedient and mouthy little girl at home, but terrified and quiet in public. When I was in kindergarten the teacher told me to drink all my milk. I drank it with tears running down my face because I was too afraid to tell her a dead fly was floating in it. One day when class ended, I carried the fuzzy white jacket I loved and hurried out of kindergarten to meet Eve.

As I started down the cement steps with its black round railing, I dropped my jacket. The bigger kids came pouring out of school behind me, looking like a herd of thundering elephants. Eve found me clinging to the rail, crying.

“What’s wrong?”

I pointed at my jacket, trampled by so many dirty feet.

“Why didn’t you just pick it up?”

And then she reached into that tremendous herd of thundering feet—or so it seemed to my five-year-old self—grabbed my jacket, took my hand, and walked me home. I don’t think she noticed my adoring eyes. She was my brave hero! I’d love her forever.

Eve babysat us often. She said I gave her more trouble than any of the others. I guess my love for her didn’t always extend to obedience.

I was in grade school when some of the “popular” kids invited me to join their informal club at school, but to become a member I had to know the meaning of a certain word. At supper that night I asked what the word meant. The table fell silent, but the look on Mom’s face said things I didn’t want to hear.

“Donna Louise,” Mom said, “we do not use words like that at this table!’

Oh no. Here comes the dreaded bar of soap.

Surprisingly, no soap came. Mom said, “Eva Lee, take your sister in the bedroom and tell her what that word means.”

I was afraid; I didn’t know I’d said a bad word.

Eve hugged away my fears. “You didn’t say anything bad, Donna,” she assured me. Then she explained certain facts of life in a way that glorified God and His creation. She made me look forward to becoming a woman.

Eve was only a girl herself, but even then, she had God-given wisdom and sweetness that never left her.

When she finished talking, she said, “Whatever that club is, you probably shouldn’t join it.”

When I was twenty and Eve twenty-seven Mom had a devastating stroke. Eve and I joined hands and begged God not to let her die, to give her more years. Mom lived five more years, but they were difficult, unhappy years for her. Then a second stroke took her to heaven.

Perhaps because we didn’t have Mom, the older we got the closer we four sisters became. We loved every minute we spent together. Three of us struggled with weight and health problems, but not Eve. Can you believe it; she could eat an entire bag of her favorite candy, M&M’s, and not gain an ounce! The other three of us gained five pounds each just watching her.

When Eve was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, our times together became even more precious. For six-and-one-half years Eve fought. She’d be in remission a few months, and then the monster would return.

The treatments were brutal.

“Donna,” Eve said when she was first diagnosed, “please don’t ask God to give me extra years. You remember what happened to Mom when we prayed that. Just pray I’ll glorify Him with the time I have left.”

The eight of us; Eve and Bruce, Mary and Steve, Ginny and Bob, and John and I had some wonderful “sister reunions” during her cancer years. We were together, the eight of us, walking on a pier out into Lake Michigan when Eve got a phone call and heard the word “remission” for the first time. Six of us dropped behind as she and Bruce looked at each other, faces full of joy. She put her head on his shoulder; he put his arm around her, and they walked ahead of us into hope.

Eve kept hosting her magical Thanksgivings the way she always had, though her last few years she couldn’t do much. It was more than enough for the rest of us just to have her there. Our adult kids, who’d gone to Aunt Eve’s every Thanksgiving since they’d been babies, came with their own families and shared in the love and laughter.

Shortly after Eve’s last Thanksgiving, Shari and Shelly, her daughters, put up her Christmas tree, and she loved seeing it. A few days later she went blind. When her ovarian cancer had metastasized to her brain, doctors had treated her with radiation and had warned blindness might be a side effect.

 “The darkness isn’t like closing your eyes,” Eve told me. “It’s a horrible blackness like nothing you can imagine.”

She was so frail by then and not eating much. Still Eve was Eve, trying to smile and make others comfortable, asking about our lives, and always telling me to pray she’d glorify God with the time she had left.

The last time I saw Eve I knew she was dying. My sister Ginny knew it too. We held hands in the driveway behind the car where we couldn’t be seen from the house, and we cried.

Even then I didn’t ask God to give Eve more time; she was suffering too much. She was blind from November until June, and then she could see forever.

I wrote this on my Facebook page nine years ago today: “Last night my sweet sister Eve peacefully left this world. She left behind her cancer, her blindness, and every pain…. She was and is an amazing woman. She loved, gave, encouraged, and cheered on so many. What fun times we shared! When she opened her eyes in heaven, she was no longer blind! I wish I could have seen her face when she looked into the eyes of her loving Lord and Savior. Because we share faith in the Lord Jesus, I know I’ll see her again, but I’ll miss her every day until I can hear her laugh.”

So much has changed in nine years. Eve’s husband, a son-in-law, and a brother-in-law have joined her in heaven. Many babies have been born into the family who know her only from our stories.

Life goes too fast. How long is life anyway? Often, it’s not as long as you think it will be. Better get ready.

For most trips we pack. To get ready to go to heaven we unpack. We unpack a lifetime of sin by believing God meant what He said: Jesus died for our sin. When we confess our sin and accept His sacrifice by faith, God unpacks our sin as far as the east is from the west.

Eve, you asked me to pray you’d glorify God with the time you had left. You sure did that. I saw Jesus in you.

Now it’s my turn to fight cancer, my turn to ask people to pray I’ll glorify God with the time I have left. I’ll be happy if I can share half the courage, love, and laughter you did! See you at Home! And don’t eat all the M&M’S before I get there!

Eve and Bruce’s 50th wedding anniversary.