My Cousin And I Exchanged Thousands Of Texts Before She Died — But I Never Asked The 1 Question I Should Have

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a day ago

I lived in fear of my cousin Tarlie's death for more than seven years. When the text arrived from my aunt, Tarlie's mom, my husband and I had put our children to bed and were sitting outside on our patio.
'She just passed. It was peaceful and her dad and I were both at her bedside when it happened.'
Tarlie died on Memorial Day, shortly after her 31st birthday. When she was 23, she was diagnosed with a form of melanoma so aggressive but benign looking that three dermatologists were fooled by its appearance, and by the time it was recognized, it was too late. Melanoma spreads through the bloodstream and lymph nodes, moving so painlessly and invisibly that it can metastasize for a long time before anyone knows.
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As I read my aunt's text, a rush of hot, electric energy ran through me. I felt my consciousness rise out of my body and then crash back down. I cried while clutching my heart as if it might fall out and shatter.
I remembered how much Tarlie wanted to live for her parents and herself. She told me her two big fears were her own suffering before death and the suffering of her mother and father.
'Odds are I will die in the coming year of a long, excruciating death, leaving two miserable parents behind,' she had texted.
As I sat outside in the dimming summer light, alive in the world that no longer held my beloved cousin, I wept and agonized over how to respond to my aunt.
'Crying for your loss and Uncle Jim's,' I wrote. 'You're such an amazing mom. Thank you for raising such an incredible human being. I love her so much and will all my life.'
It was fitting Aunt Lisa's and my first words together after Tarlie's death were via text messages. In the years after her diagnosis, Tarlie and I sent each other more than 850 pages of texts. Our phone calls often lasted up to two hours, which was a time commitment we couldn't always make, but we could text from anywhere at any time.
We texted when Tarlie found an unusual lump on her stomach while traveling with her mom in Madagascar, more than four years after her initial diagnosis. We texted a few weeks later after a doctor told her the melanoma had advanced to stage IV, the final stage. We texted as she waited in an airport security line a few days later, flying from her home in New York City to her Indiana hometown to tell her parents in person. Later, we texted as she lay in a hospital bed struggling to breathe through the side effects of immunotherapy, waiting to see if she'd need to be intubated.
'If I die, I want to just die and not know it,' she wrote before pulling through that particular time.
But even though Tarlie and I talked frequently about her potentially dying young, I sometimes felt like a hypocrite. Intellectually, I knew she could die. She had asked me to sit on the phone with her several times while she opened terrifying test results. I understood the realities of her prognosis.
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Still, I chose to believe she would live. I loved her so much that I knew I could never prepare for the pain of losing her. When I was a child, I prayed I would never outlive any of my siblings, and I loved Tarlie like a sister. If she died, my first great fear would come true. I also worried it would kill her parents. Tarlie is Aunt Lisa's only child and the love of her life.
Because I chose to believe Tarlie would live, I never asked her the questions that scared me the most: What did she want me to do if the cancer killed her? What kind of responsibilities would she ask me to fulfill for her? What would she want me to do to support her parents?
The day after Tarlie died, Aunt Lisa asked me to come back to Indiana for a small service. Tarlie chose to have her remains composted — turning her body into rich soil, reimagining her place in the world she loved so much — so she would be in Seattle with a green funeral home by the time I arrived. But her parents and many of her closest loved ones would be in her childhood home.
'I know it's last minute, so I understand if you can't come,' Aunt Lisa said.
'I'm coming,' I told her.
'Good,' she replied as we both began to cry. 'Good.'
Technically, Aunt Lisa and I aren't related by blood. Tarlie and I are related through our fathers, who are brothers. But Tarlie and I loved each other as cousin-sisters. In some photos, Tarlie, my sisters and I look like full siblings, with our dark brown eyes and broad foreheads. What, then, does that make her mother to me?
I flew into Indianapolis that weekend. My family had visited my aunt and uncle's house when we were children, but I hadn't been back in more than 20 years. In my mind, Tarlie's Barbie electric car would still be waiting for her in the long driveway. The leather armchair in the living room would still be cartoonishly large. Tarlie would be in her pink bedroom.
'I'm here, love,' I whispered. 'I'm coming to be with your mom and dad and partner and we're going to love on you.'
The Midwestern sky was broad over the flat land as I drove an hour on the interstate from the airport to Aunt Lisa's house. I thought about my cousin under that big sky and the bright sun pouring down on her, helping her grow up to be brilliant and kind, while also invisibly sowing the seeds of cancer on her cheek.
I arrived at the house already crying. Aunt Lisa emerged from around the path of the house to the deck. In some ways, Tarlie's fears had come to pass. She had suffered uncontrollable pain before she died, and her death devastated her parents. But her mother and I were still here, hugging in front of the house where Tarlie grew up and spent some of her last days. Tarlie's memory was alive inside us both, beyond even the reach of DNA and death.
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The memorial service was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. That morning, Aunt Lisa and I curled up across from each other on the leather couch where Tarlie sat so many times. I told her a lesson I had learned from another bereaved parent: When a child dies, many people will avoid mentioning them for fear of hurting the parents. But often, their child is all the parents want to talk about.
'You can call me any time,' I said. 'I'll always want to talk about Tarlie.'
As we moved through the day, I kept waiting to hear Tarlie's laugh from the next room. In her house, time felt like a thin veil. I wanted to reach through it and pull her back to us.
Before the other visitors began to arrive, I went upstairs to the guest room, changed into a black dress and wrote down notes for the remarks I wanted to give at the memorial. As I was walking back down the hallway, Aunt Lisa peeked her head out of her bedroom door.
'Could you help me with something?' she asked. 'I'm trying to figure out what to wear. Tarlie was my fashion adviser.'
It was a sacred request. During our family visits as a child, I never went in my aunt and uncle's bedroom. It was too private, too full of personal, fragile things. Now I was standing in Aunt Lisa's closet, looking up at a painting of Tarlie with a purple flower behind her ear and wishing she were here.
In another universe, Tarlie would be the one standing where I was. Aunt Lisa would be helping her dress for the wedding she would never have, the baby shower that would never be thrown. Mother and daughter in their sanctum.
'I want to wear these pants.' Aunt Lisa pointed to the loose navy pair she had on. 'They're very comfortable, but I'm not sure about the shirt. How about this gray one?'
'Something isn't totally working,' I said. 'The colors are kind of clashing.'
'What about this dress?' She moved to another row in her closet and grabbed a hanger. 'Can you zip me up?'
As she pulled the dress over her head, I realized there are only a few other people whom I have helped zip into dresses. As a child, my mother in her loose, floral dresses for church. As an adult, my own daughter. A handful of close friends. And now Aunt Lisa.
'I think it's a little too loose. It's losing your waist a bit,' I said.
'I don't think I have a waist anymore.'
We both laughed.
Then Aunt Lisa took down a dark navy bubble dress with a pattern of white flecks.
'What about this?'
She put it on and stepped in front of her mirror. When she turned around and asked me what I thought, she looked more like Tarlie's mother than ever. The same bright smile, smooth nose and sense of style. A woman of extraordinary grace and power who fiercely loved her daughter into life and then beyond it.
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It's been three years since Tarlie died. After Tarlie's body was composted, Aunt Lisa took the fertile soil to build a garden in front of her home and filled it with native plants that draw butterflies and bees to pollinate the land that raised her daughter. She lovingly tends it all year round. On what would have been Tarlie's 34th birthday, her close friends wished her a happy birthday in the WhatsApp group that Tarlie created years ago to update us on the cancer's progression. We stay in community with each other and the earth she loved. It would make her happy to know that we try to live the values that meant so much to her.
I never asked Tarlie what she wanted me to do if she died young. But as we texted and talked from a Madagascar hotel to a New York hospital bed, she was teaching herself and me how to live with the despair and hope of an uncertain future. To be afraid of the pain but remain present with the ones we love. To be overwhelmed by a mixture of agonizing grief and boundless gratitude for that miraculous love. To keep showing up for the ones left behind. To live in ways that honor the courage and compassion Tarlie brought to the world.
Virgie Townsend is the award-winning author of the short story collection 'Because We Were Christian Girls,' inspired by her own experiences growing up and leaving Christian fundamentalism. She has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Sun Magazine, Harper's Bazaar and other outlets. You can find her online at https://virgietownsend.com/.
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