Beginnings and Endings

I’ve written at least ten drafts of this post. Perhaps one might have expected a reflection to come much sooner. After all, I did fulfill my dream of moving to Europe, right? Well, that part still holds true. I did move to Europe, and the experience has been fulfilling in many ways. I started out writing this post on that topic—about my experience moving, about integrating into my new community, about looking for a house, dealing with bureaucracy, etc. etc. Looking back now, though, it feels like a hazy dream from a long, long time ago. You see, at that time, I was still a child in so many ways. And now, well…now everything in my life has been darkened beneath the shadow of tremendous loss. In a span of exactly three months I lost two of the most important women in my life. And with them, so went my childhood.

I didn’t fully realize this until that fateful Thursday on the 27^th of September, but my grandmother was like an entire universe for me—I don’t think I’d be exaggerating to say that she represented my entire childhood. When I was a baby, she took care of me while my parents worked during the week. When my parents sent me to Romania during my childhood summers, hers was the house that I most loved to spend my summer days. Though her body was weakened and bent by the passing of many years, she had a fierce energy about her. She was playful and wise and she took care of me as though I were her own daughter.

Until I was seventeen, my grandmother would sleep on the edge of the bed to better see the t.v. (she had to have a full view of the politicians, of course) and I would sleep pinned between her and the wall so that I couldn’t leave without her knowing (this was because I was a girl and my grandmother was still in the 1890s). I can still hear the way she’d drag her feet as she walked to the front gate to check if anyone of note was passing by. She was always very aware of everything that was going on. My grandmother used to say that I had the honor to be enrolled in her “shenanigan school” since she taught me a few curse words and showed me how to pull some crazy pranks. One summer, there was a meteor shower and my grandmother and I spent the entire night lying outside on the grass (with pillow, blankets, and two kittens) watching the stars fall. Another time, she bought me some fireworks and we accidentally lit one upside down – that night, there was a huge crater in the yard and a lot of dirt in places it wasn’t supposed to be. My grandmother used to lovingly call my grandfather a “stuffed turkey” and she almost passed out laughing when I introduced her to the whoopee cushion.

Oh, there are so many pleasant memories associated with my grandmother and my summers at her house. That was the place where I felt most free and it truly felt like I had a magical childhood far away from the cares of the world. When I found out that I was moving to Romania, she was the person I wanted to tell right away. But when I saw her in August, she wasn’t the same. She had lost almost half of her body weight and she couldn’t get out of bed. My uncle had extended his stay in Romania to take care of her. Though the sight of her was shocking at first, her jokes and her spirit made us all forget that she was sick. We had no doubt that she would be on her feet again. After all, she always did say that death wouldn’t come for her because she had too much work to do.

But we were naïve to think that things would get better. Sometimes I ask myself how we could possibly imagine that a woman in her eighties who had not eaten solid food for two months would ever recover. This naïve attitude is what made it impossible for me to realize that the time I saw her at the hospital would be the last time that I would see her alive. At that point, she could not speak. She could not even move her head to look at us properly. I was biting my tongue to the point of tasting blood so that I would not cry in front of her. But she knew that I was there. The nurse asked her if she knew who I was, and she struggled to say my name. I knew she didn’t want me to see her like that. She always tried to protect me from “old age and death” as she always made excuses for me to avoid funerals and sick people.

I was clumsy at the hospital. I’m grateful to my husband for having his characteristic clarity of mind to reassure my grandmother about everything that was going on and to tell her that we all loved her. All I could think about was how to walk around her bed without tripping on the wires coming from her body or banging my purse against the side of the bed. I did get a chance to show her my Romanian ID, and I’m happy she was able to know that I had moved back since I knew that for twenty-five years she lived upon the hope that her children would return to her. I messed it up after that by telling her she had a lot of holes in her arm from the IV—she looked a little worried and I told her it was okay (feeling like a doofus nonetheless).  Then, I told her goodbye and I let her know we would be coming to see her later that week when she would be better—I did not doubt that things would be that way.

That Thursday, I received that stinging phone call from my parents and everything was irrevocably changed. I stood outside of my grandmother’s house for three hours before I could go in to see her. She was wearing the dress she wore to my wedding. She looked so alive that it seemed that her chest would fill at any moment and she would rise to greet us and ask if we had eaten anything. I waited for that to happen, but, as you’d expect, the searing reality was that it wouldn’t ever happen again. I could hear my grandfather repeating the story of some of her final words; she had asked for him and told him to get a haircut. He started the story off grinning, but the grin morphed into tears. My heart broke as I saw my grandfather mourn for the woman he had spent a lifetime with. How could one spend over sixty years with someone and then suddenly find a way to exist again? The pain was unbearable. I cried until I felt the wells behind my eyes dry up. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Even now when I drive from Bucharest to my grandparents’ house in the country, I tear up thinking that I wanted her to enjoy the fact that I could do that. Instead, I’m driving toward a cold, hard gravestone. There is no more joy left there. My heart used to beam with happiness when I’d cross the train tracks into my grandmother’s village, but now the air there is so thick with nostalgia that it’s almost unbreathable. 

When I returned home to Bucharest after the funeral, my sister-in-law cried with me. She understood the heaviness of my loss, just as she understood so many other things about me. My sister-in-law wasn’t an easy person to get close to, but, over the years, we had become best friends and she was the only sister I have ever known. She was so kind and patient with me. She welcomed my husband and me when we moved to Romania and we lived with her until we found our own house. She so lovingly prepared a room for us and for Gatsby. Out of everyone, I think she was the most concerned about me adjusting to life in Romania. So she went to great lengths to ensure that I would be okay. She helped me with all of my paperwork, and she made many plans for me so that I wouldn’t get a chance to get homesick. She made a road trip out of my husband’s business trip to Oradea, she took us to see our first play in Romania, she took me on a boat ride in Herastrau Park, she took me on a walking tour of the old city center, she took me on a Bucharest bus tour (the London-inspired double-decker bus tour), she took me shopping for work clothes (and gave me many pep talks upon starting my first job in Romania), she planned a fabulous Halloween party, and she would have planned an extraordinary Thanksgiving feast if it hadn’t been for her Stage IV Breast Cancer.

No one will ever know how much pain my sister-in-law was in because she was such a strong person and she loved her family too much to let them share in her pain. As this stupid cancer was tearing her apart inside, she greeted us with so much love in her eyes and the warmest of smiles. In some weird way, her strength had convinced us that she could beat terminal cancer. Again…we had all naively forgotten the definition of the word “terminal.” My birthday came three weeks before her death. For some, it was the last time they would see her. We could tell she was in visible pain, but she was the first to dance, just as she had been on so many other occasions. That is who she was; she was a beam of joy in every room she walked in, and I don’t think she ever realized how much happiness she brought to the people around her.

On December 21^st, she went to work, but she didn’t feel well. She had developed ascites and had to go to the emergency room to get the fluid drained from her abdomen. When she came home from the hospital, she said that she would die. I, again in that stupid naïve fashion, assumed she spoke this way out of frustration. She lay on the couch and said that, “people have different types of luck in life. Some people win the lottery and some people die. Why couldn’t I have just won the lottery?” I didn’t know what to say. What could I have said? I had stopped spewing clichés like “it will be ok” or “you’ll get through this” because all of us had already used those up during her first battle with cancer and the clichés hit us right back in the face when the cancer returned. What did we know? We were all so small and so useless in those final days. There wasn’t anything we could do.

On Christmas day, my sister-in-law was somewhat better (though I guess that’s an overstatement) and she called us to her room to open our Christmas presents. She loved holidays and, despite her pain and the unimaginable thoughts she must have been having at the time, she wanted us to have our Christmas moment. We all opened our gifts. She even managed to smile and thank us all for hers. My brother-in-law got her a necklace that she squeezed in her fist as she lay down to rest. She wore that necklace the day she was buried. We left her alone for a while to give her some air and space.

Some time had passed, and we busied ourselves with whatever we could around the house. I was in the kitchen scrolling through some article on my phone when my husband and brother-in-law frantically came to bring me into the living room. My sister-in-law was lying on the sofa. My brain could not process the images it was receiving quickly enough for anything to make sense. By looking at my sister-in-law, I wouldn’t have realized what was happening, but I could see it from the looks on my husband’s and brother-in-law’s faces. There was the sense that something, something big, was happening. I felt like shouting at my sister-in-law. I wanted to yell for her to get up, but the others were so calm and everything they said to her was almost a whisper, so I didn’t dare make a sound. I could not believe how calm they were. In reality, they were probably freaking out too, but all of their efforts in those moments were focused on making my sister-in-law comfortable.

She told us she loved us and she said she was going home. There was a peaceful silence as we watched her breathe. My mind was racing as I tried to grasp at this strange reality unfolding before me. But then my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her voice; she asked to be taken to the bedroom. We watched her for a long time, hanging on her every breath. I remembered reading an article after my grandmother’s death about the process of actively dying—one of the telltale signs was the “death rattle.” I convinced myself that I couldn’t be hearing such a thing in my sweet sister-in-law’s labored breathing. She asked my brother-in-law for water and I helped him pull her up. She felt so frail as I realized that she would not be able to sit upright without someone holding her. I stood next to her, hoping that in some absurd way I could give her some of my energy. She put the palm of her hand over mine and gently stroked my fingers with all of the strength that she had. I can barely remember the timeline of these events, but I’ll never forget the feeling of her hand over mine.

Another thing I will never forget is seeing my brother-in-law’s courage in those final days. I had never seen a true goodbye between lovers in real life, only in movies. I expected him to cry, to scream, to curse the heavens…but he didn’t do any of that. He caressed her skin, he kissed her forehead, and he whispered to her that it would be okay for her to go if she felt she had to. I knew that every fiber of his being wanted her to stay, but he would not let himself display even a drop of selfishness. All he thought about in those moments was making her feel at peace, making her feel love, and making her feel safe. He was such a strong man in those final moments. It was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I had ever seen.

My husband asked her if she wanted us to send for a priest, she adamantly refused (which made us think there was hope) and she asked to be left to rest for a while. We started making phone calls…just in case. As people poured into the house, I preoccupied myself with making coffees and teas. My father-in-law didn’t leave his daughter’s side and my stomach flip-flopped as I imagined the pain a parent must feel upon seeing their child so helpless and knowing there was nothing he could do for his little girl. He didn’t say anything, but I was certain that he was envisioning my sister-in-law as a small child with beaming brown eyes and luscious brown ringlets falling on either side of her face. How could we save his little girl?

Some people outside were commenting that no one recovers from ascites. They made it onto my blacklist and I couldn’t wait for them to leave—that was not an option. Somehow, we made it through the night. When we realized my sister-in-law was stable, people started going to sleep one by one.

In the morning, I was afraid to ask questions. When I entered the living room, they told me she was better than the night before. I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. There was hope. A few hours later, her abdomen had swelled again. My brother-in-law called an ambulance. Chaos ensued as the sound of sirens mixed with the agitation of finding my sister-in-law’s medical records and making room for the gurney inside the house. They lifted her away and outside into the cold winter air. She was wearing her favorite “Bazinga” t-shirt and a pair of my pajama pants. I worried that she was cold, but they put her inside the ambulance quickly—I didn’t dare allow myself to consider if this would be the last time she’d see her home.

Knowing that hospitals are strict about visitation hours, I stayed behind with my mother-in-law. The best thing I could think of was to clean the house. My sister-in-law was a neat freak, and it became my priority to ensure that the house would be spotless when she’d return. We scrubbed the floors, washed her clothes to ensure she’d have fresh ones to change into, and we changed her bed sheets. The hours passed. My husband and brother-in-law came home that night saying she had been stabilized and that they would be allowed to see her again early the next morning.

More hours passed. It was Thursday, the 27^th. At around eleven in the morning, my husband and brother-in-law came back from the hospital in high spirits. She was in less pain as they had given her morphine. We were all very optimistic. If she would get through this hurdle, she would be okay. We would ensure that her liver would get treated to prevent the fluid build-up, and then we would focus on recovery. Things would get better. So the four of us (me, my husband, my brother-in-law, and my husband’s aunt) got in the car and headed toward the hospital, as visiting hours would begin at one o’clock.

We were three minutes away from the hospital when my brother-in-law received the dreaded phone call. I don’t know what they said to him, but we all felt the world shatter before us as our car floated across the intersection. The worst had happened. My dear sister-in-law’s kind heart had lost the power to keep beating. How could I turn back time? I remembered that my brother-in-law was the first person I saw after finding out about my grandmother’s death—he hugged me and tried to comfort me. And now? How could this be happening to him? My heart broke as I saw him processing the news. My husband had just learned that his beloved sister was gone. What would I say to him? Tears drenched my sweater and it became hard to breathe. I felt like my clothes were tightening around my body. I clenched my fists trying to stop time…to find a rewind button…but the minutes kept rolling by and we entered the hospital parking lot. My mother-in-law and father-in-law were waiting for us at the entrance so that we could go in together—they were still expecting the one o’clock visiting hours that we had previously discussed. I saw their calm faces—they hadn’t found out about their little girl. The dreadful job fell upon my poor husband whose poor soul was being crushed with every step he took.

I’m not sure how we made it up the stairs. I remember wails and salty tears mixing as we all tried to get a hold of ourselves. My husband’s uncle slammed his fist into the concrete hospital wall. One by one, they were going in to see her. I couldn’t go. Seeing her lifeless body would confirm that everything was really true, and I wasn’t ready for that.

The next few days were a blur for the entire family. I think the only thing that helped us make it through the next few days until the funeral was denial. I think we all half expected that this would be over soon and my sister-in-law would walk through the door again to be the first to dance.

More than half a year has passed, and it’s sinking in more and more that this is our new reality. I feel the pain of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I feel pain for myself. I regret that I no longer have a sister. We had so many plans to do so many things, to see so many places, to raise families together…and it’s hard to accept that that can’t happen anymore. But even more painful is the realization that her time was cut off so soon. She was only thirty-four. She had her entire life ahead of her. I would agree to never speak to her again if I could know she could come back to finish her story properly. Everywhere we go, there is a great void left by her absence. Fate was so cruel to her.

And what are we left to do? All we can do is live each day as it comes to us. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by grief and sadness, I try to think of what my sister-in-law would have wanted for each of us. She would have wanted us to live. She would have wanted us to live fiercely and to enjoy every breath of air, every blade of grass, every ray of sun. I think that the best way to honor her memory would be to do my best to live this way. I believe that her spirit lives on through us. She touched our lives in so many ways, and I think it’s our job to be better people for her. She always dreamed of a better and kinder world. So I want us to be better and kinder people. And if there is anything we should have learned from her, it’s that we should always strive to be the first to dance.

I’m still struggling to make sense of the aftermath of my grandmother’s and sister’s deaths. However, though I expected to feel the overwhelming sense of their absence, I still strongly feel their presence with me. And I truly think the best I can do is to try to take their lessons with me wherever I go and I will carry them in my heart forever.