I pet the ear of my sister’s dying bunny and will myself to cry. But the tears won’t come. I close my eyes and remember the time my sister had tucked the bunny, Coal, into one of her baby doll’s over-the-shoulder carriers, his little legs sticking out of the front holes and his tiny black body pressed against her chest. Or the time she had tossed him into a giant pile of leaves, his feet flailing in all directions and then disappearing into the mix of red, yellow, and orange.

But those images feel like a slideshow in a biology class, a black-and-white film recounting a surgery from years ago—unremarkable and distant.

I graze my hand along Coal’s velvet ears, almost as long as my pinky finger, and try to feel what my sister is feeling. She’s holding his almost lifeless body against her chest, tears making tiny puddles at the crevice between his nose and cheek.

Coal’s heartbeat is barely noticeable against his black fur. I lean towards him and watch my sister’s shaky hand hover over his body, then run across his back in gentle, trembling strokes. I try to imagine what it would be like to love something so helpless, so dependent. What it would be like to know you could do nothing for the thing that relied solely on you.

At a loss for words, I place my hand on my sister’s leg. I wish I could both love and hurt as deeply as she is—it’s a pain that’s strangely beautiful because it means she has truly loved.

I spin out of that moment, thinking of friends who had lost mothers and dogs, parents who had buried children, and the loss of my own grandmother two days before my twelfth birthday.

Death is a strange thing—agony mixed with celebration—devastation, yet also a blessing.

I watch the eyes of my sister’s dying bunny slowly blink then stare blankly at her face. I feel selfish. Selfish for not crying, selfish for not understanding the weight of this moment in the life of a fragile, seventeen-year-old girl.

I feel helpless.

I reach my hand to my sister’s shoulder, offer her a tissue, and then stand like a ragdoll at her side as she lifts Coal back into his cage and tucks his bedding around his emaciated body. I say nothing. There is nothing to say. I just stand next to her, offering my support in a world of death, pain, and heartbreaking love that even at five years her senior, I have absolutely no idea how to navigate.