I had my birthday the other day, and my birthday brings sadness and depression with it. Not because I’m getting older, that I’m used to, but because every year around this time I think of my sister, Lisa. We had almost the same birthday, the 9th of March for me, the 11th for her, so the dates sort of collided, but she was so much younger than I was that it didn’t cause any conflict. She was my baby sister, 11 years younger than I was. I was a neglectful brother to her, and that always stirs up regret around this time of year.

I have to tell this story in reverse, because it ends in grief, and this way as I work backwards it gets happier. Also, there’s a big gap in the middle, because I was living so far away from my family as everything fell apart for her.

She died in September of 2001 at the age of 33. It was not a good death, if there is such a thing. She was homeless, living day by day, and she picked up a massive systemic infection — neglect and drug abuse played a role here — and seemed to be tangled up with a street preaching group. The first I knew of it was when I got a call from my mother to say she was unconscious in the hospital. She lingered for a few days and died.

I flew to Seattle for the funeral. It was open casket, unfortunately. She’d been a pretty young woman, but the edema from the infection left her barely recognizable. I did meet the woman preacher who’d been ministering to her in her last days, and that left me furious. The preacher used the funeral to proselytize, and ask for donations, and invite everyone to join her in praising the Lord there in the funeral home. I refrained from punching her in the face, out of respect for the fact that my sister had at least found some comfort in her ministry in her final days.

I knew little else about her life before that. I’d regularly call my mother, and ask what my brothers and sisters were up to, but they didn’t know much about Lisa. She wasn’t allowed to come to my parent’s home anymore. She’d been caught stealing checks and doing petty pilfering around the house, all to feed her drug habit, so she couldn’t be trusted to not rob them blind, if given the opportunity. She spent some time in jail. There was over a decade in the 1990s where I was out of touch, living a thousand miles away, and all I knew of her was short mournful whispers from my mother or my sisters, no direct contact, even when I visited the Pacific Northwest all I’d hear is that they didn’t know where she was living, and she wouldn’t come visit me.

There was some happy news, though: she had two sons, Ben and Dylan, who have turned out just fine and are doing well today.

Otherwise, I was out of touch for the entirety of the 1990s. The 1980s were when we drifted apart — I moved out in the 80s, when I turned 18 and went off to attend university. She was only 7 when I left, and that’s how I mostly remember her, as a shy, sweet little girl. I only caught up with her now and then as she became a teenager, and a young woman. Then it seemed like I turned around and she was gone. I had missed so much of her life.

This year, though, I inherited a collection of 8mm film recordings from my family, and some of them were from the mid- to late 1980s, taken by my father during family visits and on vacations. This was a time when all of us, her brothers and sisters, had moved out and started our own families. She was pretty much an only child for those years, and it made me glad to see that at least some of the time she was happy with mom and dad.

I spliced out all these short clips of my sister and strung them together in a short video — a very short video. I’m afraid my dad was a terrible videographer. He’d film family members very briefly and then cut away to spend most of the recording panning across the landscape, and when I cut out the scenery, there wasn’t much left. But still, it’s all I have left.

She was a sweet kid and a troubled woman. I miss her.