I knocked on the door and entered my baby sister’s childhood bedroom cautiously. Catherine was sitting up in bed, wearing a comfortable sweater and yoga pants, loungewear she had been wearing for most of the endless lockdowns, like the rest of the world. I smiled from the door and approached the bed. I climbed slowly in relieved to see her again after many months.  

I’m cold’ Catherine said softly, in the voice of a timid child.  

‘It’s not cold today’ I answered ‘and the heating is on’ I continued, placing my hand on the radiator by her bed to double check.  

I hugged her tight to try and warm her up. She allowed me to hug her longer than usual, to mother her, where normally she would shrug me and most people off. 

‘Why did you have me sent to Saint John of Gods and locked away’ she asked, eyes wide staring at me.  

‘Is that what you believe happened, sweetheart?’ 

‘That IS what happened’ she snapped back venomously. ‘That’s what everyone told me happened’ 

This must be the reason I had lost precious months with her, the reason she had not even looked at me on Christmas Day, the one time we had been in a room together since she left that godforsaken psychiatric institution. It had been easier for everyone to blame me. There had to be a scapegoat. I swallowed the anger I could feel building within.  

Looking her straight in the eye and trying to embody the nurturing older sister I wanted so badly to be, wishing I could be her Florence Nightingale, I quietly and slowly explained. 

‘The Mental Health Act allows a doctor to refer someone who is a risk to themselves to be committed involuntarily to Saint John of Gods institution but in order to do so they must get permission from the next of kin’ 

I had memorised parts of the Mental Health Act over the prior months, I had phoned and spoken to mental health experts in organisations with names like Shine and Aware. I had trawled the internet in desperation, scribbling notes in a copybook which I carried with me everywhere. 

‘Catherine, I am not your next of kin.’ My voice was calm and collected. ‘Who is your next of kin’ I asked as gently as I possibly could.  

She looked long and hard at me as tears welled up in her eyes. She had held me responsible and cut me from her life based on an untruth.  

She allowed me to lean in and hug her again and I hung on as long as she allowed me to. I wanted to comfort her, swaddle her like a baby in that duvet, wrap her in love. I recalled how in all the googling I had done on mental health I had read about star blankets, hand stitched by grandmothers among the Cree people, grandmothers who infused each blanket with prayers, which they whispered under their breath as they stitched, each geometric patch telling a part of the person’s story, stitching the person whose mental health was frail back together again.  

Our own grandmothers were both long gone from this world. I wanted there and then to manifest a grandmother archetype to stitch and sew a blanket for Catherine.  

The Cree people hold a ceremony to gift the stitched blanket when completed to the loved one in their community who is suffering. They hold a sacred space enveloped in prayers and song, connecting their loved one to their community. I imagined the duvet wrapped around Catherine was a healing blanket stitched by a loving grandmother and that the ceiling above us was the vast Milkyway with its billions of stars looking down on us, the generations of women that came before us in that constellation ready to hold and support us.  

Interrupting my thoughts and pulling away from me, Catherine spoke quietly. ‘I hate the medicines they’ve given me. ‘I feel numb, I feel dead’  

A shudder went through me. ‘Those medicines are just for now’ I assured her. ‘Please just be patient, please wait for them to find the right combination’ ‘Please promise me you will wait,’ I reiterated feeling a heaviness descend on the room. 

‘And you will find other things that work well for you alongside the medication. Everyone is different. I know what helps me.  

‘I’m not as strong as you’ she said flatly. 

A silence filled the room.  

‘Let’s run away to a sweat lodge on an Indian reservation in America’ I proposed laughing trying to fill the silence. ‘We can burn sage in the tent as hot rocks make us sweat’ I was trying hard to cut through the despondency.  

‘Or closer to home, let’s walk the Camino pilgrimage, now that you can walk well again, we can hike 10 km a day through France or Spain or Portugal until our feet are sore with blisters and we can scream into the sea’ I said trying not to sound frantic. ‘We can go now, it’s almost Spring’. ‘I stopped to catch my breath ‘We will get you feeling better. You will smile again’  

‘I like the sound of those sweat lodges’ she answered, a faint smile on her lips, a glint in her eyes as she remembered her many travel adventures ‘Yeah, maybe, maybe we can travel when they lift Covid restrictions’  

‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ I said, deflated. ‘But you do know I’ll do anything for you, anything at all. You need only ask.’ 

She never asked.  

A knock on the door. 

‘Are you two coming downstairs? Will I stick on the kettle?’  

In unison, we yelled; our mother quickly retreated.  

Oh for a few minutes longer, a few hours, a few days. I could have stayed under that duvet chatting an eternity. I had missed her so much these past few months. I missed her now even sitting with her. I missed her before she was even gone, before she took her own life.