My Sister...

A year ago from this month, I was woken from sleep to be told I needed to call my mum. She needed me to pull some hospital strings and find out what was going on with my little sister who had been in a car accident. They were at the emergency area of the hospital but did not really know what was going on. At first I thought it was all a joke, I think I was still half asleep at the time. After speaking to my somewhat hysterical and yet eerily calm mother, I instinctively played things down, she (my sis) was probably in shock and they were trying to get her out of it. Mum said ‘they’re trying to revive her or something...” so off I go explaining how shock works from accidents etc. At the furthest corner of my mind, a small shiver ran down my spine, please lord; don’t let them be actually trying to revive her in the worst way possible.
So I pulled some strings and got through to the doctors station on phone, through bluffing my way through operators who normally wouldn’t put you through to some areas of the hospital. A nurse answered the phone saying the doctors were all busy, but I managed to get them to grab someone, one of the youngest of the doctors there. For most of my short-lived doctor’s career, I have always paid particular attention to how people break bad news- news of shock, sadness, sorrow. Someone has cancer, someone didn’t have long, someone is scarred for life, debilitated forever and someone has died. Too often I’ve seen this sort of hugely intense information thrown at people, unpackaged, receivers unprepared. Not that I expect it to be pampered, just, eased if there is a way possible. The first few lines I got from the doctor, where along the lines of oh my god, it’s you, it’s your sister, oh no, that’s terrible, can you come?.....an opening statement like that can only indicate to one that further bad news is to come...in my head I’m calculating, I’m yet again playing things down, has she broken something, needs a massive operation, are the surgeons there, it’ll all be ok, we’ll stabilise her and fly her out to nz...she’ll be fine...then I ask her for the nitty gritty and the particulars, what exactly is wrong with her?
“Her pupils were fixed and dilated when she was brought in, she had no vitals, but we’ve been resusing her and got a heartbeat back”
For the average person this statement may seem a bit confusing, medical jargon, sure you’ll feel your gut twist at heartbeat, but for me, a medical person, this small statement will haunt me forever. It speaks volumes so intense that these little words had me break down into a hysteria...translation is = she was brought in dead....my husband tried to calm me down but couldn’t, i was a complete mess, demanding to know who was there thinking the best freaken docs had better be there, where is the anaesthetist, where is who...all in all, knowing, that the worst had been and gone for my sister. That we were past the point of no return already, no amount of fiapoko-ing or string pulling was going to bring back my beautiful little sister. It was a battle I was wanting to fight, but had already lost...

In the next week
I cried so much, for my sister -running through the sketchy particulars of her accident, her severe and several injuries which must have caused suffrage in her last moments of life, I cried for the life full of promise ahead of her that had been ripped away, the unborn children she had wanted to have, the big wedding she had dreamed of planning....I cried for my mum, who was in the process of losing her child ( my sister was kept on life support for 2 day s to await relies and friends from overseas) which is a sentence that should never be suffered upon a parent. I cried for my stepfather, who had developed an extremely warm and close relationship with my sister over the last few years, who had raised us with love and care, shared so many laughs and happy moments, with us, but mostly my little sister, who was beside himself at her bedside, in denial of the whole thing, not wanting to give up at all on her. I cried for our own father, who barely gets to see us because he lives overseas, who was here being the rock of the family, holding himself together only shedding an odd tear and a quivering hand while stroking his daughters limp hands by her bedside in a few sparse personal moments. You only had to look at his face to see his pain, he could try to keep it to himself but we could see it, written in the lines of his face ....I cried for my siblings, because I knew like me they were suffering the loss of our sister, our friend, another anatomical part of us who had been there from nappies to graduations... we 4 had grown up, argued, laughed ,cried, shared, hugged, explored ,ventured together for the last 20+ years. ..All of this had now been taken away, put a stop too...how does one make sense of this? This week was one of visitors, of huge outpourings, of pink and purple decorations, of hugs and tears, of friends and family...I had to write a eulogy, which was so difficult as I knew my sister always thought I was a good public speaker, and yet I could not come up with words that could do this sort of farewell justice...so I threw together a few mumbled sentences to bid her goodbye, which I hate, goodbyes...

In the next month
I quit my job. At my sisters funeral my mum mentioned my sisters several degrees and courses she had taken, commenting that all the schoolwork was an excuse to delay actually beginning to work in the big world, and that she thought my sister thought ‘employment’ was something that would just get in the way of her enjoying life. To some degree I have taken this philosophy on too. As my job was hindering just that, enjoying life, which to me was friends and family and happiness. If I can’t have that then what’s the point? In the next month I moped around our family home at Lotopa with my daughter, my infant daughter brought some cheer to a very gloomy home so we stayed. We offered my mum and family our physical support by just being there, eating together, watching telly together, none of us wanted to be alone. We cried in our own rooms, or when people came who could not make it to the funeral to offer there condolences. I felt sad, and angry, and confused, I couldn’t stop imagining the last few minutes of my sister’s life...it hurt so bad. I wrote some poetry, which is therapeutic for me sometimes, and to capture this moment in my life...

In the next year
I developed a slight phobia of being in cars. Especially travelling at more than 25mph. I couldn’t get my head around how fragile the human body is, and how in a split second the human body can be rendered useless and broken all at the mercy of an idiot driver... I panicked when people wanted to carry my daughter in the car instead of put her in a car seat, I sat bolt straight upright hugging my daughter unbeknownst to everyone, like she was wrapped in iron bars, when I didn’t have a car seat and held her myself. I missed my sister like crazy, every outing without her, every revelation she did not get to hear or be part of physically, every family occasion or celebration. I cried in my room, on my bed, in the car anywhere when a memory caught me off-guard. Usually all when no one was looking. I decided that friends and family would always be first in my life from now...no matter what.

My sisters unveiling is days away, and unfortunately I cannot be there as I am preparing to deliver child number two in freezing niusila, but I expect it will be nothing less than the big bash celebrations my mum is so renown for throwing- the best food and decorations and company...it will be a happy occasion, celebrating the beautiful life of my sister, but a sad occasion as well...as it is all still so near and raw and painful. I still don’t think the pain eases, you just learn to cope better, maybe you cry less...but it never stops hurting.