Lille Soster Jill

My mother was 3 months pregnant when we emigrated to Canada and our little sister Jill was born on Christmas Eve 1957.  She lived for 11 months at which time she died from a doctor’s incompetence in misdiagnosing her pneumonia.  It was the most traumatic experience of my parents’ lives, altering their parenting forever.  My father become so over protective it cannot be described and my mother, common in those days, never spoke about Jill’s death.

I don’t believe they told us Jill was dead but I distinctly remember Mom tucking me into my bed that night and seeing tears rolling down her cheeks.  I knew without knowing.  We children did not speak of her death even to each other until we were adults but oddly enough Nette and I have very similar memories of what happened (in our minds).  All three of us older kids had snotty noses and therefore, a cold.  I clearly remember eating a pear and Mom saying not to let Jill have a bite.  But she was in her playpen and being sweet so I gave her a bite.  For decades I believed that I was responsible for her getting sick.  I would lie awake at night when I was about 8 (I was 5 when she died) and think about it over and over again.  Years later when I told the story to Nette she did not at first have that recollection but later on she said she did.  Whether my recollection prodded hers or she actually remembers the same thing is up for debate.  However, she was also at the playpen at the same time as I, I do remember that.

Jill’s death had an effect on us but it was unspoken and for a long time rather ignored.  But Dad did ask us not to speak about Jill to Mom (protecting her, we thought, but it was probably also very painful for him).  And later yet he said that Mom did not like Christmas because of Jill.  But we still did not know that she was born on that day, we thought maybe that was when she died.  So there was a lot of unspoken confusion about our little sister.

My parents had some large photos developed of her and those we were allowed to look at although there were never any pictures put up in the house only in the album.  I do remember that Jill was a darling baby, never yelling or screaming like the one down the line (wink, wink, Lotte).  She looked very much like my next little brother coming down the pike.

Because the doctor told Dad to get Mom pregnant right away so she could ‘get over it’.  And I suppose that was common medical advice back in the day.  Another thing that Dad told me later, when I was an adult, was that the hospital callously told Dad that if he didn’t bury Jill she would be thrown in the incinerator.  Can you imagine?  Dad was shocked to the core but this set up Dad’s lifelong position on death and defined our own belief that cremation is the only way to go.  Daddy said “how could I possible have a funeral, a coffin and a grave when my little girl was burned?”

Impact.  One sentence like that and it has impacted me to the nth degree.  Today I think a lot about my “lille soster” and I can’t wait to meet her in heaven, in the universe, with the divine.  I know it will happen.