Some Kinds of Love Are Magic

(For Robin, who taught me that some loves never die.)

Her name was Robin.
My mother named her after a baby bird, something wild, something meant to fly, because when she was born, she had thrush and her tiny mouth turned blue from the medicine used to treat it.
From the very beginning, she was fierce.
She was never meant for cages.

Robin lived fast.
She lived hard.
She loved wide open.

She was loud, hilarious, impossible to ignore.
She told the truth, even when it hurt.
She spun magic out of stubbornness, laughter, and pure, ferocious love.
I’m convinced she was a witch, not the broomstick kind, but the real kind, the kind who wove spells with her very existence.

We fought harder than I’ve ever fought with anyone.
But she was also the one who showed up for me before I even knew I needed someone.
She was just there, in the thick and the thin of it.

Near the end of her life, she found love again, not with a stranger, but with someone she had known her whole life.
A friend who became her home. Together, they built a life.
A real one.
A beautiful one.

And she was happy.

The last time I saw her, we were in a fighting stage.
We had missed phone calls, missed chances.

But when I showed up at her new house, I knew all would be forgiven.
All of it.

She flung the door open and pulled me inside.
She wore a massive bridal gown, a huge, ridiculous, wonderful dress, stuffed with twinkling, electric fairy lights, and she sparkled like an entire universe.

We laughed until we could hardly breathe as she dragged me through the house, showing off her giant bathtub, begging me to get in so she could run a bubble bath and fill the room with foam from her brand-new bubble machine.

That was Robin.
Wild.
Joyful.
Uncontainable.

I was back in the fold, and it felt so good.

And then, not even two weeks later, the phone rang.

It was her partner.
And he said the words I will never forget,
"Robin is gone."

Gone where? I thought.
The dollar store?
Goodwill?
The liquor store? (She loved all three.)
Gone where?

It didn’t make sense.
Until it did.
And I collapsed right there on the sidewalk, because my mind could not hold what my heart already knew.

She was gone.

And she left behind three boys, each carrying her spark, her stubbornness, her magic.

The oldest changed her life first.
He made her a mother, something she grew into with all the wild, stubborn, fierce love she had.
He married his high school sweetheart, the girl who had been part of their family from the very beginning.
She loved Robin too, loved her deeply, and now together they are raising two daughters.
Two wild, beautiful girls.
Robin got to meet one of them before she left, and she would have adored them both beyond measure.

The middle one was always the overachiever, funny, brilliant, stubborn in all the best ways. He carries so much strength... and yet, I do not think he has ever truly let himself cry for her.
Some griefs are too big for words.
Some losses you just carry inside, quietly.
He’s an attorney now, married to a woman who also knew and loved Robin.
They have two little girls, two more wonderful girls Robin would have absolutely eaten alive with love and pride.
All the daughters she never had but always dreamed of...
Her boys gave them to her, but they arrived too late and she left too soon.

And the youngest...
The youngest sometimes feels like he is still searching for her, still reaching for the sound of her voice.
Time has a way of stealing even the sharpest memories, and I think he carries that ache, the fear of forgetting, the fear of losing even the echoes of her.

I mourn for each of them.
I yearn for all the moments they should have had.
For the ordinary, everyday love she would have wrapped around them.
For the pride she would have shouted from the rooftops.

They are wild, magical people, just like she was.
They are hers.

And she would have been immeasurably proud, not because of what they achieved, but simply because they are themselves.

And oh how I miss her.
I miss having a sister, that sacred, ferocious bond only sisters know.

We were thirteen years apart, but somehow we met in the middle.
And when we met, it was like finding a part of myself I never knew was missing.

After she died, I stayed angry for a long time.
Years.
Furious at her for leaving.
Furious at the world for letting her go.

But even through the anger, even through the heartbreak, there was always only this,
Love.
Wild, tangled, undefeated love.
The kind that hums quietly in the hearts she left behind.
The kind that carries her forward, even now as I write these words.

🌿