I remember a few months ago things between my sister, Marishka, and her boyfriend, Craig, had been a bit shaky. This was sometime in early or mid-spring. My sister was spending a lot of time with her other friend, Jason. I felt bad for Craig. He’d always been great to her. He’d stuck by my sister through more than I would ever have if I were in his shoes. I really hoped it was just a short thing; that Jason would just be another snag in my sister’s always-screwed-up life. Turns out that wasn’t the case. As much as I would have loved to sit down with my sister, talk some sense into her, and leave her and Craig happy together, that wasn’t my sister. If she was going to do something, she was going to do it. There wasn’t a whole lot you could do to talk “sense” into her. Half the time I wasn’t even sure “sense” was in her vocabulary.
My sister was one of those people who would see a man smoking near his newborn baby and feel the need to tell him off. He was clearly doing something wrong, so someone had to tell him, right? Telling her that it wasn’t really her business just made her feel more inclined to say something. After a while I learned that it was pointless to tell her she might be wrong so I just kept my thoughts to myself most of the time and tried to apologize on her behalf to people she told off when she wasn’t looking.
She also was the “I don’t care what people think” type, which was true a lot of the time. Heck, the first time she met my new girlfriend, she answered the door in nothing but a sports bra. Totally normal way to introduce yourself, right? It was for her. The irony was that when she wasn’t around the house, she really did care what people thought. In reality, she was really quite beautiful, but she still wouldn’t believe you if you told her “You look fine, stop worrying so much” and she certainly would not take kindly to pointing out her “I don’t care what people think of me” philosophy. You had to let her decide she was ready to go out, since trying to tell her she looked great was a moot point anyways. So when it came to her and her relationships, I just stuck with it and let her live her life, trying not to let it affect me too much or let myself blow up at her in a righteous speech about what she was doing wrong. I just stuck with it.
I remember a little while into her Craig/Jason situation, she did a nice job of throwing me right into the middle of things – exactly where I didn’t want to be. I was in the kitchen, making some sort of food or another and she walked in. We did our own thing, not saying much for a minute or two, but then she asked a question. “Do you think it’s possible to be in love with two people at once?”
She’s going to fuck everything up.
I sighed, kept that thought to myself, and gave the most honest answer I could without setting her off. “Maybe it is. But you have a good thing with Craig. You don’t want to mess that up.” I don’t remember what she said to that, but I do remember how in the long run, it didn’t really affect any of her actions. Typical Marishka.
Fast forward a bit. It’s sometime in June. My sister and Craig have broken up. Now things with Jason are getting more serious. My sister is talking about the future with Jason and about their wedding. She’s moving her stuff into his house. They even got a dog.
Seriously, what the Hell are you doing, Marishka?
To her credit, she did seem happy – very happy actually. But to me and to most of the family, she just seemed like a teenager in the “honeymoon phase” of dating; love-struck and in love with all the temporary ecstasies Jason gave her that she never had with Craig. That’s the best background I can give before the first chain in a series of horrible events began; my sister was happy, she and her new loser-boyfriend were loving life, and despite upsets with the family here and again, we all somehow got over it and moved on.
Now it’s the middle of summer. The end of July, to be exact. I’m sitting at my computer, about to play a game with a friend. That’s when my mom came in. “Michael, Jason called. Your sister is in the hospital.” Now, my sister had been in the hospital before, so this didn’t “shock” me as much as it might shock anyone else who had just been told his/her sister was just admitted to the hospital. It still worried me though. But despite being worried, I remember thinking that this would just be another one of those times. She’s in for something-or-other, she gets over it, she goes back home. I thought it would all be okay. What is it they say about ignorance and bliss?
I spent that first night in the hospital, sitting on a couch in the waiting room. I wanted to text someone about it, but I didn’t really know who to text, or what I would even say. After all, I still didn’t really think it would end up being serious. I continued to think this for a little while longer. A day or two later, on the way back home from another visit, I remember texting my girlfriend about it. She asked if I was okay and I remembering telling her that I was fine, still not too shaken by the whole ordeal. Still sure my sister would wake up.
I don’t remember how long my sister was actually in that hospital. One week? A week and a half? Two weeks? When your day becomes a routine of waking up, getting ready, driving to the hospital, and just pining away time, you begin to lose track of when it really is. That was how it felt for me. At a certain point, it started to seem unlikely she would wake, but nothing was official, and I kept going to the hospital, day after day. I didn’t know what to do when I got there, or how to react. I just knew that I should go. It seemed like the right thing. I knew how I wanted to react. I wanted to be super emotional. I wanted to cry and beg God for some miracle. I wanted to just lose it. But I didn’t. I was quiet, stoic. Everyone else in my family had taken time to say something in private to my sister. They made a routine of talking to her, including her in conversation, and saying goodbye when they left. I could barely even do that. I always said no when my mom asked if I wanted to have a moment alone. I didn’t know what I would say, or how the words would come out. I may as well have been a mute. It went on that way pretty much every time I visited her.
There is a date that sticks in my head though. I think it was the first time reality actually hit me. It was August 1st, and I was getting ready for my friend’s graduation party. I was in the kitchen, and my dad came in to tell me that my mom wasn’t doing so well because the most recent tests showed that my sister was – more or less – brain dead. She wasn’t going to recover. That was the first time it really hit me. I was in pretty much the same place I’d been a few months ago when I’d had a conversation with my sister telling her not to mess things up, and I was hearing about how I’d never have a conversation with her again. About anything. And then it all hit me. Everything. As soon as my dad was out of earshot, I burst into tears. Standing there in the kitchen, making my coffee like I always do, and crying.
You got what you wanted: real tears. Now you’re going to look like a mess at the party.
After that, I still kept up my visits. Kept up my stoicism when I was around her. Kept up the same routine. But things were different outside of the hospital now. When I was by myself, I was feeling exactly the way I’d wanted to feel a few weeks ago. Once it hits you, it doesn’t stop hitting you.
It wasn’t too much later that they couldn’t treat her anymore at the hospital. When someone in her condition is “stable” the hospital won’t keep them around to die. They’ll give them to you and hope you can handle the treatment on your own. So there we were. Left with a bunch of equipment, a small, former-computer room to try to keep it all in, and my sister slowly passing away.
My mother and grandmother took shifts taking care of her. My mom would make sure nothing happened during the day, my grandma doing the same at night. We all knew what was going to happen, but we wanted it done in whatever way was least painful for my sister. It took my mom a while to accept that this meant taking her off of foods, but it happened eventually.
So that was my life for a while. I started school at the end of August, but I still called every day and came home on weekends. Those nights I was home, I remember going downstairs at night time just to keep my grandma company. There was something oddly calming about it. It was sad, yes; but being in the room with my back to the big window exposing the open night, the house completely quiet, save for the sound of the breathing machine helping my sister, and my grandma there being as supportive and caring as she’d always been, it was a nice calm amidst all the chaos happening.
That was the last weekend I had expected to be home for a while. Between football games, homework, and studying for exams, I didn’t expect to be home until almost October. I remember telling my little brothers I’d be gone at school and wouldn’t see them for another three weeks. All my mother could do was look at me and grimly say, “You’ll be home sooner than that.” She knew my sister didn’t have long, and I knew she was right – we all did – but it still stung to hear.
As the days passed, my sister’s condition got worse and worse. I wanted to make it to the weekend after my first exam. I wanted to go home when I was “supposed to.” Just wanted to make it that long. I half-expected to get a call in the morning or the middle of the day or sometime when I wouldn’t be able to handle it and be told that she had passed. But by all accounts, my sister wasn’t done yet. Some of the hired nurses kept asking if she was waiting for someone. My family insisted she wanted to say goodbye to me before she left. At some point – right before my exam – my mom told me I should come home before the weekend. That I needed to come home. So that was it then. It was going to happen in a few days.
No pressure, Michael, but after your big exam, you’re going to need to go home and say goodbye to your sister forever, mmk?
That was a Wednesday night. September 29th. I took my exam, hardly caring about what I got on it, and then I went home. Tonight, I would have to find a way to say something to my sister – no, not just “something,” but everything I wanted to say to her before she was gone. Gone forever. I got home and situated myself, and then I sat with my sister and my mom for a little while. But after so long, I got tired. It wasn’t even that late, 11pm maybe. I felt kind of pathetic.
She’s going to die soon and all you can do is go to bed?
But I was tired, and I couldn’t take much more of the waiting. I told my mom that I was going to go to bed soon, and she told me I should say goodbye to my sister. This was it.
I’d really expected that moment to be sad. For me to be balling my eyes out, barely able to speak to my sister. But I didn’t. I didn’t say much – I hardly knew what to say – but I was finally able to be honest with my sister; finally able to give her sincere thoughts that I could never muster before: “I love you, Marishka. But I want you to know it’s okay to go. You were a great sister, I hope you know that…” – Somehow I even managed to throw in a joke – “I’ll be sure to party it up in college, just for you. I love you, Marishka…goodbye.”
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