Bereaved Sibling

The Loss of a Lifetime: When an Adult Sister Dies

               

When I was 22 (22 years, 6 months), my younger sister, who was my only sibling, died. The day the doctor said and I heard my parent's loud cry, was the most impactful day of my life. In the thickness of shock, I didn’t realize that the rest of my life would be measured in before and after. Before, when my family was intact. After, when I would somehow learn to live without the person I was supposed to get a lifetime with.

 “Be strong for your parents,” said blurs of people at Rekha’s memorial service. I nodded, but inside me, something twisted. I stood in a daze as people streamed by, offering their awkward words and hugs. Be strong for your parents? I thought.

I was barely breathing. I was barely standing here. Strong was the last thing I felt.

In the early months after Rekha’s death at 20 (20 years, 5 months, 4 days), I existed in a heavy fog. Nothing was as I knew it. I’d abandoned the little life I’d started in Karimnagar and landed back in Vallampatla where my parents were, where my sister and I had grown up. My family was living their lives — going to fields, working. Meanwhile, my life had stopped.

My childhood home was filled with the cloying scent of flowers just starting to die. It struck me then how terrible it was that we send flowers to the grieving — here you go, another reminder that nothing is permanent, that everything lovely will be lost.

My sister’s absence was heavy in the house. Though she had died in Karimnagar, her room was scattered with relics: the bed she had slept in for so many years, her dresses lying on shelves, a handful of videos and books. Memories pinned to each corner.

Having always taken comfort in words, I scoured the internet for a book for someone like me — an adult whose (barely) adult sister had died. What I found was unimpressive: There were more books on losing a pet than losing a brother or sister. A few books existed for surviving children after a death in the family, but they were for small children. One memoir documented a sister’s grief following her brother’s death, but it was out of print.

What did it mean that there were no handbooks for me? Those people asked me to be strong in the face of the biggest loss I’d ever experienced or imagined? At times, I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel so shattered, especially in the shadow of my parents’ immense loss.

So much was lost:

My parents, who would never be the same. Their pain was almost visible as if a piece of their bodies had been cut out. I had lost myself, too, or at least the version of me that was unscathed by tragedy: an innocent version, who walked around in some parallel universe where her sister was still alive, ignorant to the incredible fortune of an entirely alive family.

My sister, my past. Rekha’s big black eyes. Her loud laugh. The person who was supposed to walk with me longer than anyone else in this life. The only other person who knew what it was like to grow up with our parents, in our home.

The future. I cried for the nephews and nieces I would never have. I cried for my own faceless potential children who would never know my sister. How would I explain her? How would I ensure that her essence wasn’t lost, that she wasn’t just a figure in old photographs, a handful of stories? And I had to have children someday, right? I was the only person who could make my parents the grandparents they always assumed they’d be.

And all the tough times ahead when my sister wouldn’t be by my side. When my parents began to age. When my grandparents died. There would be no one to share these dark milestones.

And so, I had to stay alive. The burden of needing to stay healthy, to stay safe, to stay close.

I felt like our family had been a four-legged table, and one leg had suddenly been torn off. The remaining three of us wobbled and teetered. We felt the missing leg like an amputee, each morning waking to the horrible fact that Rekha was gone.

I sent texts to my sister in those final months. At first, memories blazed through my head and I used the texts to capture them before they flitted away, gone forever: my sister walking towards me when she visited me in Hyderabad, the sun splattering her cheeks, turning her golden. The time I said her that I would take her to Hyderabad for a tour very soon and visit every place and shop in malls and movies etc., but in a blink of an eye, every word I said got buried.

Later, I wrote the posts when I needed to cry — when the grief sat coiled and waiting in my chest, needing to be let out, released. I couldn’t find the words of other bereaved sisters or brothers to bring me comfort, so I created my own.

One day, when I was lost in my sadness, my relatives/friends said, “You won’t always feel like this. You’ll have a family of your own. You’ll move on.” This seemed impossible in my 22-year-old skin. I couldn’t imagine this potential future my relatives/friends spoke of, this predicted family.

But very, very slowly, I began putting my life back together. I continued my 1st Job G.E.T (Quality Control). I made the difficult decision to leave home again and move back to Hyderabad. But I couldn’t stabilize myself. So, I resigned and stayed work less for several months and then I started my PG in Aug. 2016.

After nearly 3 years (2 years, 7 months, 4 days,) the sharp shock and grief I felt in those early months are greyed out a bit. It took years for the pain to fade a little, for the words “your sister is dead” to stop pounding in my head — but they did. Rekha’s absence is mostly a dull hurt, the ghost of an old broken bone that aches when it rains. I feel it more on holidays, festivals and anniversaries, when someone else close to me dies.

I’ll always wish she was still here. I’ll always wonder what she would look like and what she’d be doing if she was still alive — at 26. At 40. At 75.

I move on and through. Perhaps I am even strong, like those well-meaning mourners at my sister’s memorial asked me to be. But my sister’s loss will remain with me for my whole life — just like she was supposed to.

Reference: THE BLOG By Lynn Shattuck