My sister visited me late into my junior year of college. It was the first time I had seen her since I left. It was a surprise, a shock really. She’d grown since I’d seen her — had come into herself. Her two front teeth stuck out a little less, her shoulders no longer slouched, and she stood tall and proud. And yet . . . her eyes lacked the sparkle that had once brilliantly flashed across them. Her perpetual smile had been lost, replaced by two forehead creases that wrinkled when she entered my room. “Hello.”
What was she doing here?
“I’ve tried calling.”
She paused, and I felt a rift between us. The last few years had created such different people, and our separation was tangible here, in this eggshell colored room with one window and dirty sheets. She sighed.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
I led her to a nearby cafe. It was decaying — the paint was peeling, and the coffee tasted like old paper — but it was quiet. I ordered coffee. My sister had nothing. We sat down, and she, very slowly, told me about the mammogram. About the tumor growing silently in her breast for years. How the doctors had caught it during a routine checkup. About the experimental treatments she was doing and the diets she was on. I listened and hugged her, telling her it would be okay and lying through my teeth.
I sit down at a cafe. Across the street, a mother and daughter walk side by side, silently. I speculate: this pair has a strained relationship. They haven’t seen each other in years, and now they make their way to a particular coffeehouse with a somber obedience. They have the same order, the mother and the daughter. When they finish, small coffee grounds remain in the bottom of the finished cups. The daughter drinks these; the mother does not. Once they are ready, and they know exactly when they are, they rise and make their way to the exit. They will bid each other farewell, silently loving, yet not quite understanding each other.
I got the call at home. I drove the forty-five minutes as fast as I could, but when I got to the hospital, everything slowed down. The white walls blurred together, the tiles — like quicksand — pulled me down into them. The nurse’s voice was muffled as she directed me to the waiting room. As I peered through the window at my sister’s deathbed, I couldn’t see her. Doctors scurried around the room, gowned in faint blue and plastic, poking and prodding. Masked by the endless tubes going into her, and bathed in the harsh hospital lighting, whatever remained of my sister was now lost. One of the doctors came out, wiping her hands. She passed peacefully, without struggle. How could that be true? Endless hours of radiation therapy and appointments, protesting the cancer eating away at her chest and at her bones. My sister went kicking and screaming — she just couldn’t lift her legs or open her mouth.
The funeral was on a Saturday. It was an ordinary day otherwise: the sky was cloudless, and the sun shone bright and clear overhead. I felt overdressed in my suit. I had never been to a funeral before. I didn’t know why everyone wore black — it seemed to me that the mourners were trying to get closer to my sister by wearing it. The dead assume black, regardless of how they lived. My sister’s favorite color was green. She would’ve hated being here — the funeral director saw to that. They played a piece by Haydn to finish the ceremony. It was very beautiful, I think. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was too occupied with the sweat collecting at my brow and under my arms. I wondered if it would be this hot at my funeral, too.
I exhausted myself receiving condolences. People gave these curt, sad smiles, saying that they were sorry. Not one would meet my eyes. At some point, a woman broke down crying between the bathroom and the kitchen. She said she’d seen a photo of my sister as a child. She was beaming. The woman sobbed. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just hadn’t seen her like that since before. Frozen, I let the stranger cry into my shoulder. She must have been around my sister’s age. It occurred to me that we knew her in two completely different ways. This stranger had no idea that my sister used to cover her eyes during Mufasa’s death, too scared to watch the wildebeest. It was only here that I first felt the weight of death bearing down on me at last. I’d only know my sister as she was to me — we all would — not as what she was becoming, or what she could have been.
When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream. I stand outside a crumbling, ancient house. Entranced, I walk the overgrown path between the street and the steps, closing the gate behind me. I open the door, peering inside first at the dusty floors and crooked bookshelves before looking at the further set of stairs leading up to the second floor. As I step inside, the walls deepen, and the floorboards extend; the door disappears behind me, the bookshelves recede, the old piano fades from view — miles away now — but despite this, the stairs remain. And so I step forward and up, climbing to the second landing, but the further I go, the more the stairs stretch upwards. I ascend faster, quickening my pace, but as I run, the ground recoils faster. My calves and thighs burn, my feet go numb, and I begin to slow down, fatigued. Soon, I’m not moving at all, only standing while I watch the world move away from me. I’d stay there until I woke in a frigid sweat, hours before dawn.
What was she doing here?
“I’ve tried calling.”
She paused, and I felt a rift between us. The last few years had created such different people, and our separation was tangible here, in this eggshell colored room with one window and dirty sheets. She sighed.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
I led her to a nearby cafe. It was decaying — the paint was peeling, and the coffee tasted like old paper — but it was quiet. I ordered coffee. My sister had nothing. We sat down, and she, very slowly, told me about the mammogram. About the tumor growing silently in her breast for years. How the doctors had caught it during a routine checkup. About the experimental treatments she was doing and the diets she was on. I listened and hugged her, telling her it would be okay and lying through my teeth.
I sit down at a cafe. Across the street, a mother and daughter walk side by side, silently. I speculate: this pair has a strained relationship. They haven’t seen each other in years, and now they make their way to a particular coffeehouse with a somber obedience. They have the same order, the mother and the daughter. When they finish, small coffee grounds remain in the bottom of the finished cups. The daughter drinks these; the mother does not. Once they are ready, and they know exactly when they are, they rise and make their way to the exit. They will bid each other farewell, silently loving, yet not quite understanding each other.
I got the call at home. I drove the forty-five minutes as fast as I could, but when I got to the hospital, everything slowed down. The white walls blurred together, the tiles — like quicksand — pulled me down into them. The nurse’s voice was muffled as she directed me to the waiting room. As I peered through the window at my sister’s deathbed, I couldn’t see her. Doctors scurried around the room, gowned in faint blue and plastic, poking and prodding. Masked by the endless tubes going into her, and bathed in the harsh hospital lighting, whatever remained of my sister was now lost. One of the doctors came out, wiping her hands. She passed peacefully, without struggle. How could that be true? Endless hours of radiation therapy and appointments, protesting the cancer eating away at her chest and at her bones. My sister went kicking and screaming — she just couldn’t lift her legs or open her mouth.
The funeral was on a Saturday. It was an ordinary day otherwise: the sky was cloudless, and the sun shone bright and clear overhead. I felt overdressed in my suit. I had never been to a funeral before. I didn’t know why everyone wore black — it seemed to me that the mourners were trying to get closer to my sister by wearing it. The dead assume black, regardless of how they lived. My sister’s favorite color was green. She would’ve hated being here — the funeral director saw to that. They played a piece by Haydn to finish the ceremony. It was very beautiful, I think. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was too occupied with the sweat collecting at my brow and under my arms. I wondered if it would be this hot at my funeral, too.
I exhausted myself receiving condolences. People gave these curt, sad smiles, saying that they were sorry. Not one would meet my eyes. At some point, a woman broke down crying between the bathroom and the kitchen. She said she’d seen a photo of my sister as a child. She was beaming. The woman sobbed. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just hadn’t seen her like that since before. Frozen, I let the stranger cry into my shoulder. She must have been around my sister’s age. It occurred to me that we knew her in two completely different ways. This stranger had no idea that my sister used to cover her eyes during Mufasa’s death, too scared to watch the wildebeest. It was only here that I first felt the weight of death bearing down on me at last. I’d only know my sister as she was to me — we all would — not as what she was becoming, or what she could have been.
When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream. I stand outside a crumbling, ancient house. Entranced, I walk the overgrown path between the street and the steps, closing the gate behind me. I open the door, peering inside first at the dusty floors and crooked bookshelves before looking at the further set of stairs leading up to the second floor. As I step inside, the walls deepen, and the floorboards extend; the door disappears behind me, the bookshelves recede, the old piano fades from view — miles away now — but despite this, the stairs remain. And so I step forward and up, climbing to the second landing, but the further I go, the more the stairs stretch upwards. I ascend faster, quickening my pace, but as I run, the ground recoils faster. My calves and thighs burn, my feet go numb, and I begin to slow down, fatigued. Soon, I’m not moving at all, only standing while I watch the world move away from me. I’d stay there until I woke in a frigid sweat, hours before dawn.