A wolf at the door

I always think I am going to delete it, but I never do.

Every 21 days since October 22nd of last year, my voicemail replays me a message in which my sister, between choked-back tears, tells me that she's just seen her rheumatologist and has been diagnosed with lupus. Usually, I only listen long enough to hear the first five words, "Hi Nathaniel, it's your sister"; they are squeezed through a voice cracking with fear and shock and uncertainty. Then, invariably, I press 9 and save the message for another 21 days.

My parents were traveling in Thailand and Japan that week. My sister bore the news with no family close at hand, and when I returned that call, I mostly remember the feeling of wanting to be there with her. Maybe to take her out to lunch, or to a movie, or to sit on the couch with my arm around her, kleenex and wastebin close at hand, or to fight about something inconsequential, like we always do. Instead, I sat in my lab at work, 2000 miles away, doing all I could by voice alone.

I wish I could say that I keep Kristina's message because she was mean and awful when we were kids, and hearing the news every three weeks is some sadistic way of vindicating my childhood. Or, maybe my interpersonal correspondence skills are so bad, I need a message that carries so much weight to remind me to call her. Perhaps I use it as a reminder of how tenuous and mutable our health is, that I should do everything I can to guard my own. At least these reasons would make sense. But it is something else, something I don't understand.

In the past, I've kept messages that relate to something I am working through. For a few months, I wouldn't delete voicemail from a boy I liked, a crush I strugged with for a long time. When I finally removed his voice from my mailbox I suddenly knew I was okay, that I had moved on.

So maybe this is similar, albeit weightier. Maybe it is the talisman thrown into the sea when the problem has dissipated, the soul once again at ease. I don't know what kind of resolution will bring me to delete the message. I can imagine a total and unending remission of her symptoms; or, a moment when I *know* she is okay, when I can see there has been little adverse effect, that her life is fully lived in, that things have turned out for the best after all, despite any lupine howl that may have roughened the journey.

I make it sound worse than it is though. Her immune system is under control. She is an obstetrics resident (and always has stories for me I don't want to hear about vaginal births gone terribly wrong, but I am glad she has the stories and tells them). She recently bought a house (and chose a kitchen countertop color I would best describe as "confetti barfage," but it's good she chose something based on her own tastes). She is well. So, although I would like to say that her painful message represents some kind of hope for the future, that doesn't quite make sense. The present is hopeful already.

I think I preserve the message as a token of a turning point. Just as we keep the tassel from our graduation cap, buy a t-shirt from a concert, or snap a photo of ourselves in front of the Eiffel Tower, her words and her voice mark an important plot point in a story--one that is still full of pronounced uncertainties. Our lives are all uncertain to a large extent; but that day, when she left her rheumatologist's office, when I checked my voicemail, life's ambiguities were amplified. Eventually, the ripples her diagnosis caused will subside. The calm surface, smooth as glass, will return, reflecting a life no more ambiguous than any other. Then, the ramifications of the message will be clear, and like a stone, I will let it go and watch it sink away.