It could have been anything, but in the end it was the earring that pushed me over the edge. The earring with the lime green flat oval stone, half of a pair that belonged to Beth. The only belonging of hers I wanted. The one thing that always brought her image to my mind as if she were still alive, still in Madison, still being the mom, the wife, the sister, the nurse, the fighter of a wretched fight that she should have won but lost.

Her daughter Marie gave me the earrings when I finally managed to squeak out my request for them. She gave them freely and without a second thought, telling me that not only was it alright but she wanted me to have them.

“We want you to have them,” she said, and I didn’t ask her if she meant her and her dad or her and her mom, choosing to believe it was her mom.

Since having the earrings I rarely wore them, convinced they would get lost. The earrings never got packed when I traveled, and I always said good-bye to them while choosing other pairs to be tucked into a beaded pouch. And when visiting family it wouldn’t do for one of my sisters to see me wearing them and ask me how it was that I got those particular earrings. Because they would recognize the pair for what it was — Beth’s signature set — and they would wonder how it had come to live with me, this little piece of our sister.

The earrings found their way into my ears one morning as I got ready to meet my friend Laura for coffee. Despite this momentous decision I quickly forgot they were there. Climbing into the shower later that day I realized they were still in my ears, in the shower, even though you should never wear earrings in the shower because they could get washed down the drain. Still I didn’t take Beth’s earrings off, and when toweling myself dry I looked in the mirror and saw only one earring in my left ear and none in my right but it that couldn’t be true. My brain babbled in shock. This is not happening. I did not put those earrings in my ears this morning. I did not leave them on when I got in the shower and knew they were there. I absolutely did not lose one of Beth’s earrings.

I stared into the mirror, willing the earring to reappear. It did not. I held the damp towel up to my face and searched the whole of it, knowing the earring was clinging to the terrycloth, waiting for me to rescue it. Stepped naked into the shower, kneeling on the floor and searching the slate tiles for that bright green bit of Beth waiting to be found and returned to its rightful place in my earring rack distracted me from the open drain that leered at me. I crawled around the bathroom floor, not caring about the dust balls in the corner and grit in the grout, then dripped water across the house while hunting for a flashlight.

Back on the shower floor, my fingernail broke on the drain cover when I tugged at it and pulled it off, ignored the sharp yank of a torn cuticle, and pointed flashlight desperately into the drain. No earring lying at the bottom curve of the pipe.

Before that day, for months I had not cried. My heart had felt empty and numb as I responded to friends’ concerns about my life, my sister, the recent end of a 13-year long relationship. After everything it felt like there were no tears left in me. But in the moments after seeing that empty drain I sat on the shower floor and sucked at my bleeding fingertip and sobbed and tried to believe this wasn’t happening because it couldn’t be happening because I couldn’t lose one more thing.

I didn’t want to call my friend Laura who I was supposed to see that day, because clearly it was her fault the earring was lost in the first place. But Laura had been there with me through everything over the last year and she always picked up when I called. Today was no different, and she listened to my babbling and had to ask me to repeat myself a few times so she could understand what I was saying, then she got on her cell phone to call a plumber while I continued to babble incoherently in her other ear.

“Michelle… Michelle… Michelle!” I tried to stop moaning to hear what she had to say. “I’m switching to my cell so I can drive over. Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, don’t run any water in that shower. I’m calling you back and coming over now.”

She hung up and I leaned against the glass door of the shower stall, the phone dial-toning in my ear. The tears on my cheeks mixed with water running off my hair and the cold floor started to make itself felt so I left the scene of my crime and lay down on my bed and let the tears run into my ears as I stared at the ceiling. She was gone and the earring was gone and the partner I was supposed to be with forever was gone and what was the point of this whole life thing anyway?

I was getting colder by the second, still wrapped in a damp terrycloth cocoon but the question begged an answer. Finally I decided there was no point and if that was the case then I wasn’t getting up to let my friend in to help me and might as well quit my job too because why bother trying to keep a roof over my head since that was probably going to get taken away too since I couldn’t afford it as a single mom… Augh, I’m so dramatic sometimes! It’s an earring, for gods’ sake.

Dragging myself up I trudged back to the bathroom to hang my towel on the hook next to the shower, taking one last look at the tile.

And there it was. Right in front of my eyes, right next to the lid of the drain I had tossed aside in my frenzy. The earring. Whole, unscathed, perfect, just lying there waiting to be found. Everything in my head stopped and I stared at it for a full minute. I couldn’t believe it was there any more than I had comprehended it had been gone in the first place. My hand shook as I reached out and lifted the earring, moving it far from the gaping hole of the drain just in case my trembling fingers lost their grip. Then I practically leaped across the bathroom to my closet, hanging it safely on the earring rack there.

After calling Laura back to tell her not to come over I wrapped myself back up in a towel even though by now I was fully dry. I lay down on my bed and let the tears run into my ears as I stared at the ceiling. “Beth. Beth. Why did you leave us? We need you here. Thanks for giving me your earring back, thanks for that. And I hate to be greedy but it’s not enough. Three years of fighting, and for what? We lost you anyway.” Three long years of watching her survive so many crises and near-misses maybe fooled us all into believing she’d beat it. Maybe we — or at least I — built up some kind of crazy hope that against all the odds she’d be the miracle to prove why it was so important for us to never lose hope.

But she did leave us and on a day like today I felt lost, uncomprehending of this reality. How could her kids, her husband, all of us get along without the one who was our core?

She didn’t answer me. It was clear then as it is now: she’s not coming back. Ever. I just need to deal with that reality. I rolled out of bed to get dressed and go back out into the world.