Flumes Vol. 2 Issue 2 Winter 2017 | Page 61

48

The sister in me was devastated. I thought I was reconciled to that fact that the sister I had loved died a long time ago. Years ago, I used to have a recurring dream, born from the many dinnertime conversations I had with my parents begging them to acknowledge her substance abuse. In the nightmare I was frantically asking people to save her, to recognize how sick she was. I would wake with a start frustrated with myself, with her doctors, with all of us. As her illness worsened, and her withdrawal from the family became complete, I stopped having that dream. But now that her death was actually happening, the wound that I thought had scarred over suddenly ripped open and burned with pain.

To the less intimate observer she had lived an enviable life in the American upper class. She graduated from college Phi Beta Kappa in computer engineering, married a handsome upwardly mobile young man, and had a healthy, gifted son. But none of it was enough to save her from her disease. It all disappeared with her descent into alcoholism and drug use. After her divorce, her drinking escalated until she changed from an engaged mother to a disinterested drunk, who quit parenting her son in his teenage years. All the while she pushed away her brother, sisters, and parents whenever we tried to help her.

Now I stood vigil at her bedside with my bravest sister, the gorilla’s 29-year-old son and his father, her ex-husband who loved her so and would have done anything to help her when they were married. True to his wedding promises he was with her in sickness and now in death. My sister’s illness had such a tight hold on all of us and had bound us to one another. Only a fellow survivor could understand and process the intense history and why we had to be here. We needed to say good-bye in the right way and help her die with peace and dignity.

We met with the palliative care doctors to articulate the inevitable and to put into action a plan to let her die. Her son, who had medical