Big Brother and Little Sister

“Grief does not change you … It reveals you.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

For a time, she seemed to be getting better. The doctors had removed all the tubes from her throat and my baby sister was able to sit up and hold a decent length conversation before exhaustion set in and she would need to rest. I tried to take advantage of those moments. I tried to talk about anything and everything that I thought would keep Toya’s mind sharp, and keep her spirits lifted.

We mainly talked about me and my life. I lived in New Jersey at the time and since she couldn’t travel much, on account of her twice-weekly dialysis appointments, she did a lot of traveling via my stories. We made a deal that once she was better, and had gone through her rehabilitation, she would come visit me. She had never been to New York and it made me feel so good that she was thinking about life after this moment.

“What is that?” she asked as I stood up to investigate out the window. “It’s a navy helicopter.” Its turbine engines were so much stronger than the hospital’s regular helicopter that the walls in her room shook.  The landing pad was just a few hundred feet outside of her window-- a reminder that she was a patient in the Intensive Care Unit. “It looks like they are practicing take offs and landings on the hospital’s helipad.” She relaxed her shoulders and leaned back, I always had a nack for explaining things in a way that put her at ease. We had a lot of practice being big brother and little sister.

“So you ready go to your new room?” They were upgrading her status away from the highly-critical ICU to the elevated-health-status part of the floor, a sign that the doctors didn’t think she was in as much danger. In retrospect, perhaps we were all in too much of a hurry. “Yeah, I guess so …” she sounded so tired I thought to myself then and I my heart whispers to me now. 

This was the last conversation we would ever have.

 

I did get to ask her a question. Her answer has kept me from loosing my mind in the years since. I leaned in close so no one could hear our conversation: “You aren’t trying to quit on us are you?” Her eyes locked in on mine, she frowned her brow saying “NO” quite firmly. Her body may not have been able to continue, but her spirit was always strong.

She went into cardiac arrest as the plane taxied down the runway, I would piece together later. By the time I was able to get another ticket and fly back, less than 24 hours later, she was gone.