February 2, 2012 The anniversary of Jill's death

My sister, Jill, died of breast cancer on this day when she was 42 years old.  We were painting our mother's kitchen when she announced that she had found a new lump and it was different.  She knew from the beginning that it was ominous.  She had had benign cysts before.  She had to talk her doctor into getting her a mamogram.  The surgeon said that he had gotten it all.  And then the cancer came bubbling up in the scar tissue.  She was given two years to live.  She asked me to cut her hair before the chemo.  Then before she went to Duke Hospital to have a bone marrow transplant, she had us over to her house for a cookout.  I was a perfect match for her platelets which had to be replenished after her bone marrow was irradiated.  Her husband and I brought her home on Christmas Eve. "They have killed me", she said. She lived until February 2.  They don't do bone marrow transplants for breast cancer anymore because they don't work.

I have a purple crape myrtle in my yard that blooms on her birthday in July. 

I can walk in her honor.