Even though I have three siblings, I grew up as an only child. Out of my three siblings, I’ve only ever really interacted with two of them. Out of those two, there was only one that ever really put any effort to be personally involved in my life, and that was my late sister Eleanor.
She was the oldest of the three, so I suppose it was partly through some sense of responsibility and maturity that she chose to be at least mildly involved with my life. Seeing as how they were all half-siblings, I can sort of understand why they took such a stand-off-ish stance in dealing with us. They all despised our father, and only Eleanor chose to get close to my mother.
It’s difficult to discuss my siblings with too much detail, or even to describe particular moments with them in the past, as they always treated me in such an alien way, yet I was expected to call them brother and sister, and to say “our mom,” and “our dad.”
But regardless of my earlier childhood memories, Eleanor suddenly became a large part of my late teenage life, as well as my own emotional journey.
At first, it was with a few visits every now and then, when she began to move around from one job and town to another. Her nomadic lifestyle forced her to give us her cats, which after a few weeks, we ended up giving away. Later, she would come again after father died, and she would occasionally live with us for a few weeks at a time.
When she did stay with us, she made a particular dish that I grew to associate with Eleanor, and remember far too fondly. It was some sort of spicy tofu dish that involved chopped jalapenos, green onion, soy sauce, sesame seed oil, and lightly fried tofu. As many times as I tried to replicate this, or for that matter, try to get my mother to replicate it, we could never quite get how she got the dish to be so spicy. It would be a recipe that she would take to her grave.
It couldn’t have been more than two years after dad died that we learned that Eleanor had cancer. I was still recovering from dad’s death, and to learn that she had cancer as well was both uncanny and shocking.
The first time, my mom visited her on her own for a week, and apparently left fighting. The second time, we decided to go together, but she said she was in no state to have visitors, but since I had already booked tickets, we decided to go and visit our relatives in Los Angeles anyway. The third time, we got a call about her failing health, but since my mom had previous arrangements, I chose to go alone.
She was in the hospital, drugged up on vicodin, and in an all-too-familiar state. As she lay there, I walked over and sat to the left of her bed. I wasn’t really sure how to react, whether I should cry, or feel something particularly profound, so instead I observed her.
For a week, I stayed in her apartment room. It was more like a studio apartment than anything, except with a bathroom. Her bed was laid out on the floor with a single mattress and some sheets and pillows, a table next to her bed with a rather expensive-looking stereo system, an HDTV and DVD/VCR player with two DVD cases and a few rented or borrowed Korean VHS tapes lying about. The curtain was half-open, to let a perpetually gloomy light fill the room at all hours of the day.
The bed smelled like that of a dying, single woman in her 40’s. Wrapping myself in the sheets she used before her final residence offered mixed emotions.
For a week, I visited her and stayed with her during the day. I was told that because of the state she was in, that I should massage her legs, which I believe was meant to help prevent atrophy. She rarely woke up, if at all. But even despite being comatose, I think she was still aware of her hearing. In retrospect, I wish I talked to her, even if it would have been awkward.
And so, I spent most of my time with Eleanor during that week by massaging her legs. Her complexion became far paler than what would be considered healthy. Her lips chapped often, so it became regular practice to dab her lips with a piece of tissue that was soaked in water. She looked fragile, yet whenever she woke up, her irritable personality came to surface.
Once, she woke up, asking what I was doing. I don’t think she recognized me. Even though she seemed so awake at that moment, she went back to sleep soon after.
Friday morning, we all went to visit Eleanor again, only to be met with shock and confusion at her complete absence. She had apparently passed in the night, and when no one on her contact list would answer, she was simply taken away to the morgue to begin the cremation process. A clerical error had robbed us of a final farewell—the thought alone was both infuriating and bewildering.
For a few moments, my mother, my half-brother, and a few other relatives and friends simply stood there for a while, in front of her now vacant bed. Sterile and tucked, it had been prepared with clean sheets and pillow, for whomever to lay in next.
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