Tania, Requiescat in Pace et in Amore, Our Beloved Sister

A couple of weeks ago, it was a year since my sister, Tania, died.  And when Tania died, and then when the year anniversary silently journeyed into our lives, for me, and for all of us within the larger family, at neither time did our lives stop or come apart, as we all, except for Tania, had and still now have our own families, one with just a spouse, the others with children and grandchildren, one extended blended family larger than all others. But even taken altogether, except for the pause for her funeral, because of Covid a month after she died, and then the gathering at her townhouse for all of us to choose from her possessions what we wanted or needed, or which had special meaning for us – oh, so much left over which was not chosen – her absence from us did not deeply affect the families we are in, but her death deeply remained with us all individually.

Some of the treasures I selected from my sister’s home, I have already written of, and some have become incorporated into my life.  However, the deeper things, the memories of my sister since childhood, interactions over the years with her, tender moments and moments with words, have recently all surfaced within me again because of the anniversary of her death, joined by occasional humorous reminders of her voice, of the way she spoke, of her more than occasional verbal designation of me as a “twit” – perhaps an English expression she had learned from our mom long ago. 

And over the year, I have also thought back to and missed her happiness and exuberance in hosting the family Christmas Eve tamale dinner at her home with all the abundance of her wonderful Christmas decorations displayed, the little gifts she gave everyone for Easter or the Fourth of July, and her many acts of love and expressions of impatience.  And since her battle with cancer is now over, I dwelt upon her long and courageous battle against it in her body, and its potential affects within her mind and soul – a deep insight for me as to the many dimensions of a struggle against cancer, knowledge to file away within me, hopefully only needing to retrieve it for the good and education of others.

I considered the memories of our times at her home, the still clear visual images of her townhouse, the remodeled kitchen and dining room, her organization of the food and drinks within her refrigerator, and all the various mugs in her kitchen – I loved her kitchen filled with mugs.  I smiled at her love for her cats – multiple cats – of the last three, one who insistently intruded into anything I was doing or trying to do, such as eat dinner, to get a scritch, the second, not pushy or assertive at all, but many times waiting within arms-reach for her own gentle pet, the third, rarely, if ever to be seen.

And then there were also the times of tears, and unshed tears just on the verge of falling, with the biweekly cancer treatments, and the attendant alternating weeks of feeling just ok, and the weeks of feeling crappy bad, a seemingly endless cycle so hard on her body, and even harder on her spirit and mind.  And in driving her back and forth to these sessions, I would observe the reoccurring times of emptiness upon her face and the ensuing sad occasional words, when she would remember the man she had loved, who she eventually discovered did not love her back, not at all, for he was already with another woman.

So much life, so much hope, needing so much our family, making the best she could with her life and her dwindling options, doing all she knew how, to make sure we were all part of that family life so important to her.  This is what I remember most, her insistent love of life and family, and the ever-present pain of longing for the love that had walked away from her without looking back.

We gathered at Tania’s grave on the anniversary of her death – me, my wife, the one sister still living in the area, and a few nieces and others in the extended family.  We gathered around the plot where she is buried with chairs for sitting, our BYO tea for drinking and talking – the English side of our lives – and flowers for leaving.  We have done this a few times at my parents’ grave, such as when sometime after my mother died, we placed the new gravestone on the plot where they are buried, engraved with both our dad’s and mom’s names and dates.  At Tania’s burial plot, we spoke of our sister.  We spoke of what we remembered most of her and her life, of the last days leading up to her passing, how we have missed her since she died, and the ways in which she was important to us.  Since there was yet no gravestone for her, we placed most of the flowers on the ground of her burial plot, and drank our tea and ate assorted goodies, and spent about an hour gathered around her grave. 

After finishing our tea and conversation, we gathered our things, put everything in our cars, drove to our parents’ grave, placed flowers there, and brushed off and cleaned the gravestone as best we could.  I then walked among the gravestones of the cemetery and placed some of the remaining flowers on my grandmother’s grave, the grave of my uncle Herculano, at the one of my oldest aunt, Chenca, all who were both born in Mexico, and at the grave of one of my favorite cousins, Mary, who was older than my mother, which had always intrigued me.  I have always loved cemeteries, the quiet, the solitude, the reminder of the life of others who once lived and enjoyed that which stretches all around the cemetery in the Valley, and I enjoyed my quiet time lingering among the gravestones of my family and others.

After our time at the cemetery, we gathered for lunch at a restaurant, then returned to our respective homes, refreshed in our memories of our sister’s life, now knowing even more, that our sister, Tania, and the memories of our lives together with her, will always touch our spirit and be within our minds and hearts, all the way up to when we ourselves, her siblings, begin to depart one by one, and the last one standing – literally – will remain as the final living repository of all stories of the family, and also becoming by default, the honored record-keeper of the passing of all the rest. 

For when the last of all of us siblings pass, then all of us who were born to our Mexican-America dad and English mom and who grew up on the plot of land purchased with the inheritance our mom had received from her mother who died in England the year after our mom arrived in the US, and also then all of us who lived in the two houses our father built on that plot, on the then dirt weathered and traffic-rutted road in Sylmar, will be gone, and our story then will have come to an end and have been completely written, with parts, just very small parts, written upon the pages of this website.

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