In Memoriam

Greetings,

This morning at 9:55, my beloved sister, the only one whose father we shared, passed away while I was alone keeping vigil, peacefully and without pain. I noticed that she stopped breathing shallow breaths and then rushed to get the family together while the nurse confirmed that her heart had stopped. I was trembling, which is something I didn’t expect, just spasms of trembling and tears, and each of us holding on to each other, and to her, as if the whole world needed to stop to let us feel this bereavement.

She had been battling cancer since last July. Some of you may also remember that she had contracted HIV/AIDS. This happened in the early nineties, when treatment was not yet proven to be effective…we never expected her to live this long. It affected her eyes, her skin and her body, but it never affected her spirit. She was a fighter to the end.

If I have been a little less present on EC in the past year, it has been because of her struggle: the defeat of chemo- and radiation therapies, coming to terms with dying, coming to terms with losing her. And while she prepared to die, we, myself and our family, prepared ourselves in our own way to endure this loss. I have been reading Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary, (translated from the French by Richard Howard) a collection of the incongruous fragments of memory that affected his mourning for his mother, and from which I will quote below:

In the past week, we watched her deteriorate; it was more like seeing her vanish slowly, like a sailboat slowly going out to sea, until all one can discern is the top of its mast poking above the horizon. Slowly she started to sleep more, and then she found it hard to find the words she wanted to say, after that she couldn’t swallow anymore, and then she couldn’t speak at all…she just kept breathing; quiet shallow breaths, more automatic than conscious, until this morning when they just stopped.

We never left her body alone, we just waited for the people from the funeral home to pick her up. Two young men, dressed in black with their gurney in tow waited outside for us to say goodbye. When we were done, they entered the room and got her ready. When they were done, a loudspeaker in the hospice requested a moment of respect as she was wheeled out of the room toward the elevator, while we stood in the hallway to see her taken away.

My mother is a nurse, with 8 years of experience working in palliative care, but this experience did not prepare her for the ordeal of watching her daughter die. When death finally came, my 80-year old mother knew exactly what to do, extending her body and keeping her mouth closed until rigor mortis set in. She did this with sorrowful duty…no parent should ever have to do or see that, it is the most unnatural thing imaginable.

And this is the day she chose to die…how can that be? How does one choose to die? I don’t know, but I know that “when” was a choice. She lived in Ottawa, our nation’s capital, just two hours away from here in Montreal, and today is our national holiday, Canada Day, which is a huge celebration. There’s a stage set up on Parliament Hill, acrobatic jets flying overhead, and tonight, some fireworks…she chose a good day: one of celebration and joy. We also had a thundershower, a perfect metaphor for what this day has felt like: joy and tears, laughter and sorrow. I felt as if, for a brief moment, the curtain that hides the truth about life was briefly pulled aside. Her consciousness is no more, and I am left only with the echoes of the spectacle of its disappearance. All around us, city life went on as usual, daylight followed the night, the birds still sang, there were traffic jams because the streets were closed for the festivities…and now the eerie spirit-like light of a full moon shines through my window.

While we waited for the funeral people to take her away, I recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourners, I will need to say it each morning for the next 7 days. I am also supposed to have a Shiva: a 7-day period during which visitors will come over to offer comfort. I don’t know if I will do this correctly, but I trust in the wisdom of Jewish mourning to grieve as I can, and need to.

We decided to have dinner together at a restaurant when her room, the one she died in, was emptied of her things. An incident occurred between one of my half-sisters and our mother; hard feelings and hard words like “Never again!” and “How could you?” were said, then suddenly a catharsis, from remembering what happened today…followed by total reconciliation…I have not been this exhausted in a while…

We hear the roar of the acrobatic jets overhead; we have dinner at a restaurant and already talk about my sister and the things she did, or didn’t do. We remember her lament the feeling that she had not accomplished anything…people fear this more than the suffering that death brings: a life ending, but without meaning. But then, if one has loved and has been loved, is that not enough meaning? She loved and was dearly loved.

As of today, the 13-month age gap between us will begin to widen, it seems to me that when someone dies, a whole universe dies with her. My sister was my first playmate, my first companion at the beginning of life; no one knew me better. Her kindness and compassion, her love of life and her devotion to our family were absolute. When I came out to her, the first thing she said was: “I love you”, it was all that needed to be said; it was also the last thing she ever said to me, when speaking was difficult.

I feel joy, not sadness, or is it the bittersweet joy of seeing the completion of a beautiful life? We had 20 more years than we could have dared expect when we heard of her HIV diagnosis. Because she lived, she was able to see her nephews and nieces grow up, she was a doting aunt and big sister to our younger two sisters. I feel gratitude for having known her, and all the richer for it.

Life is short dear readers. A death like this reminds us that it is important to have the right values and to achieve the right things. It reminds us that a mis-lived life is no life at all, and this includes the madly excessive pursuits of wealth and fame, or living in the closeted shadows of unnecessary secrets.

Thank you for reading, I needed to share this extraordinary day…