On a Thursday, on a clear, warm, sunny day, a month after my sister Tania’s passing, we were finally able to have her funeral and burial, the delay due to the increased demand for mortuary and cemetery services because of pandemic deaths, and the restrictions then in place on public gatherings.  The day of the funeral and burial was not an overtly sad time for most of the family – not a dies illa, dies irae, of the mournful Catholic mass for the dead of years past – as we all had said our goodbyes before my sister passed and we now all had parts to perform for the services.  Many family members spent the month arranging and preparing for the events of the day, my wife and I worked over the two-week period leading up to the final events for my sister preparing our house and backyard to host the luncheon after the burial – I wrote and then delivered the eulogy at the church service – so essentially, as a family, we were all still in business mode, the same mode that had carried us along during the arrangements for our mom’s funeral and burial and much larger luncheon eight years earlier.

On the Saturday after the funeral, all the family gathered at my sister’s townhouse so we could choose from my sister’s numerous teapots, knickknacks and curios, and all her Christmas and other holiday decorations and other items, that my niece had worked hard over the past few days to arrange for display – a family event we had also staged for my mom’s teapots and other items when she died. 

I knew this day of gathering at my sister’s townhouse was coming.  I had sensed this day when, about two months before her death, I began to spend part of four evenings a week with her and I began to understand for the first time the deeper meaning for my sister of all the labeled white boxes of holiday decorations I had seen in her garage for years.  This day of choosing was the day I was not looking forward to seeing.  I had deliberately not thought about it, as this was the time and event, I emotionally and mentally knew was the beginning of the dissolution of my sister’s life, of the life she had created for herself, to protect, and self-comfort, and make up for the lack of the love and the relationships she had hoped for, but was never quite able to achieve.  

All these possessions were things – yes, mere things – that made her happy, that composed her home and world, but which also reflected her essential aloneness and pain that she could not escape.  With these things, alone and by herself, she had bravely used them to help keep the loneliness and years of disappointments at bay, to prevent them from engulfing and overwhelming her life and soul.  And some years back, I had begun to sense the meaning of many of my sister’s things, and now that she is gone, I wish in the years during her battle with cancer – a fight to physically keep the cancer at bay as long as possible with treatment, and an even more courageous struggle to not allow the cancer to dominate or define her life – during those years, I wish I had possessed the capacity to pay more attention to these aspects of my sister’s life.

I wish I had known and understood her better and more deeply concerning the function of the possessions in her life, as perhaps I could have helped lessen the jagged cutting edges of the disappointments of her life and her growing sense of loss…maybe…  For with a deeper and clearer understanding, then perhaps with all my words, actions, and prayers, I could have in a sense held her hand more tenderly and with more meaning and significance as she was battling her cancer over the years and then during her time of passing, in her last months, weeks, and days.  But now this external dissolution of her life, which I had dreaded, was upon us, marking the beginning of the knowing and feeling and experiencing, yes, that my sister was truly gone, for soon her place would no longer know her – gone and erased from her townhouse, from the earth – but the knowledge of her aloneness and departure, even now, staying and settling, deeper and more permanently within my heart and life.

On this Saturday, by the time my wife and I arrived, the picking and choosing had already commenced.  I found some remaining teapots, and a few cat figurines and little ceramic boxes also with cats, for my daughter and granddaughters in Missouri.  My niece said she found about a hundred teapots in the garage, an exaggeration I believed.  However, with so many teapots still on display that I had to pick my way through, I now thought a hundred might have been fairly close to the truth.  I initially assumed many of the teapots had been gifts from friends, for many were unique in the shape of bookcases, garden sheds or a cozy den complete with a cat and a fire in the fireplace, but then after looking at all the jewelry, and seeing sets of teapots of the same style and shape but different colors, I wondered also about the teapots…

After quickly viewing the items on display, I was amazed – everyone was amazed – with how much nice costume jewelry my sister possessed.  In addition to many one of a kind items, she had multiple sets of rings and earrings, and necklaces and bracelets, of many different styles and shapes and colors – she had holiday jewelry – but the majority of the jewelry was not opened or ever used – and this was the more difficult aspect for me and many other family members.  My sister possessed way more jewelry than she could ever have possibly worn, even with ten more years of life, so much more than even the gathered family could take, and most took as much as a person could conceivably use, usually more. 

I searched through the piles, boxes, and tubs of jewelry for items my daughters would possibly want, as they had not yet arrived.  I also gathered some of the ring sets and the more delicate necklace and bracelet sets for my granddaughters in Missouri – pretty things for young teenage hands, for special times, or perhaps everyday wear, I didn’t really know.

For myself, to join the other treasures that sit upon the small two-drawer chest in my study, I selected two holiday-themed bracelets, one for Christmas, the other for July 4th, two very pretty brooches of flowers, an elegant silvered brooch of two female faces, and another of an enameled female Mardi Gras face, the faces all reminding me of the different moods – happy, non-committal, uncomprehending with blank staring eyes – upon the face of the woman who fastened them to her clothing…my sister, on her way out…to somewhere…  

One final selection was a brooch of an exuberant display of emerald green crystal flowers and leaves – made in China, still in its cellophane wrapper – the brooch worth more than enough to buy a very nice house in Los Angeles, if the glass crystals were in fact emeralds, my favorite gemstone, of which I have none – the dark green color and shape of the glass crystals and their resemblance to exquisite gem-quality emeralds, the reason for my choice of it, now infused and even further colored and edged with my emotions and feelings for my sister and her passing, as she never wore this item of jewelry…this particular brooch.

I also selected my sister’s rosary that I found alone and seemingly abandoned by itself on the top of the TV stand – itself almost a piece of jewelry made of pale sky-blue glass oval shaped beads encased in filigree cages of antique bronze, the rosary possessing a pleasant weight in the hands.  The blue glass beads – the beads my sister handled and occasionally moved her fingers upon to count Hail Marys – because of their color reminded me of the jellybeans we received as children for Easter from our mother, which I loved, the light blue colored one a favorite, now sadly absent from my Easter diet, as I should not now eat much sugar.

And during all the choosing of the jewelry – at times energetic, but never confused or competitive – there were many comments, so many words followed by sighs then silence, utterances of sadness for how much of the jewelry was never used, was never opened.  And this spoken reality, now like the rising smoke of the incense at the Catholic funeral, lingered and began to fill the rooms and spaces of my sister’s townhouse, but unlike the sweet comforting perfume of the incense of the church, this cloud carried even more sadness, even as much was chosen and put aside – small piles along the wall, in Easter baskets brought up from the garage as a handy place to store claimed selections, individual designated spaces in bookcases, on tables or within cabinets, everything organized – as was necessary – to facilitate the dissolution on that day.

Piles of my sister’s stuff, for now stuff it was, and now becoming the stuff of others, also grew in various places upon the large L-shaped black leather couch.  After a while, I sat down at one of the few open spaces upon it to rest, not from physical exertion, but to pause my heart, from all the necessary family activity around me and its insistent meaning.  And this couch, huge and comfortable and occupying most of the middle of the living room, had been my sister’s exclusive habitation place for the last four months or so of her life.  I still clearly see her attempts to shift her body about upon it, to make herself as comfortable as possible – sometimes needing my assistance to move her legs or adjust her head or the pillows upon which she lay.  She always faced the perpetually-on TV – usually tuned to the classic movie station, providing my sister a form of life and companionship in moving black and white images and voices, a needed comfort and maybe an escape for her – a habit utilized and perfected by my sister over the years as a soothing, perhaps numbing, substitute for the lack of the body heat of a man lying next to her at night. 

But the TV always distracted me from my attempts to focus upon my sister.  For being a would-be writer, I always like a good story, and some of the movies were indeed excellent – classic humanly sad or deeply tragic.  These especially took away my time and focus from what I considered my most important task, my attempts to converse and dialogue and pray with my sister.  And, honestly, my distraction with a movie and my ensuing silence, punctuated only occasionally with a movie critic comment, was sometimes probably preferred by my sister, as then my words did not intrude into the world of her heart and mind, which was still tinged with disappointments of her life and anger toward some.  And by understanding this, a well of sadness had deepened within me during my sister’s remaining months, over her deteriorating condition, and her seeming determination, at times, to not engage with me, or even with other close family members – even with the several who I had conspired with for them to phone or Facetime me “just out-of-blue” while I was there with my sister in the evening.  And even though I did have three or four significant discussions and prayer times with my sister, for which I am thankful, and that my sister did finally open her heart and reconciled with all family members and with God, the sadness of those final months, now began to overflow upon me as I sat on the couch, in the place where her head had always rested.

My sister’s two beloved cats, the only living possessions and responsibilities she had within her home when she died, were no longer in the townhouse, taken together just days after she passed to a good home with the mother of one of Tania’s final day-care providers, otherwise one of them, the one called Penelope, would now be very comfortably all over everything.  And as I sat quietly, I became very aware of her absence, for there was no intrusion into my rest upon the couch, no insistent meowing and purring, no walking all over me, no careful smelling of my hair or a rough tongue licking the skin of my arm – all attempts on her part to either encourage my touch or her instant ecstatic response to just even one finger upon any of the patches of her black and white fur.  And so now, there was no socially enthusiastic feline distracting my family from this business time, no breathing or living reminder of my sister’s authentic love for her cats or of their permanent life-long presence with her, for that part of her life, was already gone and forgotten by most.  And the human activity, and the joy and natural boisterousness of the larger family being all together, also did not touch me as I sat on the couch, nor did it intrude into my thoughts, other than as a vague acknowledgement that this time and activity was proper, and necessary, and good for my family. 

While I sat within my sister’s townhouse, I only permitted myself to think briefly about my times in the evening with my sister and the feelings welling up within me.  It was only when I sat outside alone on the front patio, that I allowed myself to touch the sadness of all the unopened costume jewelry in the boxes and all the boxed decorations down in the garage.  I also dwelt upon the care, and time, and money my sister had spent remodeling her kitchen and furnishing it with carefully chosen sets of dishes, cheery colorful mugs, and pictures of roosters and pigs and farm products upon the wall.  Everything displaying and illustrating a constant movement towards happiness and the enjoyment of life.

Tania had started all these endeavors, projects, and purchases years ago, without any thought or inkling of departing as soon as she had.  These purchases and changes were a way, I believe, of recreating her life, a new life designed in many ways to fill the emptiness of the crumbled hope for a man in her life, a hope extinguished after a few ultimately very sad long-term relationships, and the last one, crushing my sister with a very bad ending.  

Tania, very much in love with the man of her last long-term relationship, bought a wedding ring for him with the happy thought of proposing marriage.  When she proposed, he was non-committal, did not take the ring, and as told to me by Tania herself, he said something along the lines that because of the family business he could not get married until his father died, or something like that which neither of us really understood.  My sister’s fiftieth birthday arrived, and she hosted and paid for a big birthday celebration at a favorite Chinese restaurant, with the entire local family, close friends, and her man and a few members of his family in attendance.  It was a nice gathering, everyone enjoyed the time honoring my sister, the food was great, and my sister was very happy with the party and with her man sitting beside her.  

Then, not long after her birthday, Tania learned, and the family learned, that during this last long-term relationship, the man she loved very much – and loved to the end of her days – also had at the same time, another long-term relationship with another woman.  This pertinent bit of relational information was revealed when the man she loved, hospitalized to treat an infected spider bite, kept putting my sister off from visiting him in the hospital, which of course she did not expect or understand.  Finally, after a few days, because it seems he was anxious that Tania was just going to visit and then run into the other woman, he phoned my sister to tell her there was another woman in his life – and that he was going to marry her.  Classic.  Truly a denouement worthy enough to end the plot of a sad but tragically riveting black and white movie on the classic movie station – and also such a sudden, naked, deeply hurting, and public devastation for my sister.  Another sister told me that Tania had visited her within days of this revelation very emotionally upset and had told her that when her man phoned her and gave her this news, she repeatedly told him on the phone that they could still make their situation better.  He told her no.  An unexpected and shattering alteration to the script of my sister’s anticipated life story.

However, that relationship ended about fifteen years ago and before Tania bought all the costume jewelry, and before the remodeling, and the purchase of even the fairly expensive jewelry she possessed – jewelry advertised on one of those cable-marketing shows on TV that my sister would watch late at night.  She did buy some nice pieces of up-and-coming new gemstones, which she wore with pride, and now…later that day…my other sisters and some of the nieces, including my daughters, were also going to select a few pieces of Tania’s nice jewelry collection to remember her and her past generosity to all of them.  And while all of this was good and needful for the family, deep down inside me I knew that all of her purchases and remodeling activity was to soften and mute the hurt, and to fill her life with years of looking forward to decorating for the holidays in turn, and wearing special jewelry for each.  It was also a way to focus more on the larger family, which she did generously, and to bravely live and fill her life as fully as she could.

For now, when I look at the photos of her as a little girl – as one of my younger sisters, at her smile, at her prettiness – in those photos, I can see the hope and the assumed assurance and expectation of a much happier and fulfilled life, a hope I think all of us siblings took for granted, as we saw this in our home through our parents, who though not perfect, gave us the tenderness and kindness of a Mexican dad, and the dutiful love of an English mom, a unique and blessed inheritance.  And now, knowing how her life ended without these things, I can understand the depth of the sadness and aloneness she endured and lived and struggled with, especially now measured by the boxes and piles and tubs of unopened costume jewelry. 

And for me, the realities of my sister’s life – the painful, life-long disappointments within her life, a lack of final intimate love, a difficult and ultimately lonely battle against cancer – creates a sadness within me, true, but one also colored tenderly by my memories of the pretty happy little girl Tania always was when she was young.  For my younger sister – the first of us six siblings to die, the only one not married, one of two of us without children – after a brave but tiring five-year battle with cancer, is now buried and gone, but my understanding of her life – now a permanent sadness always tender, but one much more life-giving than debilitating – will remain and endure, and will live within me for good.

Now, of course, my comprehension of my sister, Tania’s life, as with all other lives, will always be incomplete and foggy in places and filled with some misconceptions and errors in others, but what I do know of her life and passing, will create within me a better understanding of the mysteries of the complexity and profound depth of human suffering, pain, and brokenness, and the extent and capacity of endurance and survival built within the human spirit.  And I have, and will, also continue to deepen in my understanding of the corresponding, yet far exceeding, breadth and depth and absolute profoundness of the love of God for humankind in all of our sadness, brokenness, and sin – a fountain overflowing with a love and compassion far beyond human ability, knowledge, and comprehension – for those created with the capacity to sense, experience, and fathom the depths of this love, for those created in the image and likeness of God, as was Tania, my younger sister.

Requiescat in Pace

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