There are certain defining moments in my life that, upon reflection, feel so visceral and integral, in shaping the outlines of the robust person I am still growing into. The earliest memory I have of the many Important Moments of my life was graduating Montessori kindergarten and feeling excitement at starting primary school and making friends. Even as a child, I knew I enjoyed being able to share my opinions with others, and more importantly, to hear their own perspectives. Socializing was a hazy game that I knew needed careful analysis, and communicating with others was the basis of how I determined the Aristotelian strategy of my own principles, goals, and what mattered to me. I loved having friends and loved talking, and that is my earliest memory of pure unfettered joy.
Primary school were the best years of my life. Countless good memories that override the bad, which were really only the unnecessary caning we get from teachers for minor or any school infractions. The excitement was well-founded; mental snapshots of myself and other playmates participating in silly games during recess, performing in goofy talent shows, and generally being up to carefree tomfoolery in the neighborhood parks, float to the top of the stream of my happy childhood every time I wish to reminisce.
Another good memory finds myself at 17 with my driver's license, ecstatically deciding to drive my two good friends, Karmen and May, back home from college. I remember being so very happy that day, even with the sun shining right into my eyes and with the typical heavy and unbearable city traffic.
Giving up everything and moving to Ohio............... Is a bittersweet montage, that has taught me a great deal about resilience and true independence. Although the subsequent seasons post-graduation were tumultuous, looking back on my struggles, that I only recently started to share with loved ones, only fills me with that much more strength and determination to live the rest of my life under my terms. Many things may have come undone, but many others have also come into place, such as the clarity and resolution of understanding what I deserve and what I don't.
But then you died, and now the defining moment in my life seems to be categorized into a cataclysmic Before and After, with my memories of you and of us exploding like icy shrapnels piercing the chambers of my heart whenever you cross my mind.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I feel the pain start stabbing through my body and the violence inside of myself feels uncontrollable. I don't know how to comprehend that I have outlived you already when I'm only 24, that you are gone from the world of the living which is the only world I exist in and the only world that keeps us apart. Honestly, part of me knows that if you were alive you'd want me to feel better by now, to laugh at memes that we would relate to, and think of the good times only. But all of me knows you're dead, and that overrides any light, any more.
20... You only turned 20 months ago, but 20 is all that you will ever be now, all that you ever were. It's so... Terrible. It's a tragedy. I feel like I'm playing internal Scrabble with myself when I think of you, trying to come up with any and all words related to speech that is real and true and accurate but nothing suffices, I say fuck it, and scream instead. I am my own Appalachian perpetual motion machine, spinning round and round, with grief the eternal byproduct. It feels, fucking, weird, that everything around me is moving at their usual pace with no consequence whilst I am in pain, I am wounded, I have lost my sister, yet the machine keeps spinning, keeps beckoning new days that end up shit anyway.
You made your mother so happy, all of us so happy, when you came into our lives. I remember our dear family, so raucous and tight-knit, jovially teasing me on how I am no longer the youngest in the family, that I am now dethroned. I remember not understanding why that would be an issue at all because, god, I've always wanted a younger sibling. I've always wanted a friend at home, a friend I could sleep over with and play with and talk to for the rest of my life with minimal judgement. I wanted so badly to be able to have someone I could look out for, and that would have my back, too. I WAS SO HAPPY MEETING YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME, G. I WAS SO HAPPY. You told me how much you loved the house, your own bedroom. You were only 5, and you were the cutest little walking bundle of joy, shyly and hesitantly beaming, fingers above you trailing over the piano keys you would learn to play throughout your short life. You were perfect. That first day we met, we played with my favorite Barbie dolls that I brought all the way on our trip to see you, to give to you, and we instinctively knew without ever needing to say it out loud, that we were sworn sisters now, friends forever tied by chosen blood.
I remember singing you every 周杰倫 song I knew at Uncle Shammy's house. I remember singing '童话' by 光良 to you, and teaching you '老鼠爱大米'. It was your first time at the house, the first time Aunty Jo and Uncle Chew drove you down to meet the rest of our Mah family in the city. I see the years going past now, each scene ending and beginning with laughter and glee, watching you grow taller and taller with every visit, being able to talk to you about more and more things as you grew more mature and brilliant. We celebrated so many Chinese New Years together, so many vacations, so many outings, so many swapped clothes, so many birthdays. So much happiness.
You are now back at the temple where your mother picked you up having adopted you all those years ago as a 5-year-old girl. You are back there, resting eternally among the ashes of the departed, permanently displayed in a box with a number as the only identification, the only physical proof denoting what is left of you. Faithfully you lie, and faithful your parents are still, in karmic consequence, and retribution. Justice, for what you had to endure the last few seconds of your precious, young life. How terrified you must have felt, how helpless and alone... I only wish I could have been the one instead, to trade my life for yours in a heartbeat. Out of all the dumb shit I've done in my life... You had to be the one to die so unexpectedly, and so savagely. It hurts. It's cruel.
This pain, wave after wave, is a daily occurrence. As repeated as the agony has been, you'd think that whatever self-preservation my body evolutionarily remembers would kick in, that the thin mental sutures of protection crisscrossing the chasms of my immeasurable grief would at the very least be a bit more prepared, a bit more taut, for the onslaught upon my waking, but nope. New day. New pain. Upon remembering, all I want to do, honestly, is vomit and smoke myself back to sleep.
I called Uncle Simon a week after my mother broke the news to me, about your fall. He told me many stories of his childhood, some funny, most peculiar, but all of them I know to distract me from the main impart of his comfort to me: that life moves on and I have to move on with it. Like clockwork Asian society, Uncle Simon's factual perspective makes sense and it's not like I have a choice on deciding that life should not move on, for me or for anyone else around me. I just can't... Possibly... Find closure at such a tragic turn of events. I don't know who killed you, and so I smoke, and I cry.
I remember your father saying one time that your nickname, GG, were acronyms for God's Gift. In playful moments I teased you that it stood for God's Grief. I misspoke. This is what grief is, so much grief that your ribs start to ache and ring with so much hurt and unbelievable shock. I'm astounded, conflicted, and so, so sad.
This overwhelming feeling... It's very clinical for me, to observe, to perceive. I feel so untethered from the clockwork of daily living, just by a few seconds, but enough of the delay to realize I feel so empty, as meaningless meaningless meaningless conversations flow around me, to me, from me. I stand watching myself move and talk and see the vividness of life in motion, the changing of seasons, the living and laughing and loving, but I am so incredibly numb at best inside this shell that pretends. This automatic combustion of emotions that engulfs me and debilitates me so, is so carefully contained and sequestered inside myself inside myself inside myself and there it stays evermore, the grief epicenter of my solar hurt system, from which every affliction, past and present, permeates from, meticulously arranged and categorized by severity and impact of trauma.
There's nothing I can do about the grief. No one understands until it happens to them, losing a sibling, so young, so unbelievably. It really puts everything else in my life, mundane or electrifying, into focus; irrelevant. Everything is irrelevant when it comes to how horrifically you died, and who pushed you. I need to feel every second of terror you felt as you fell that night, G, all alone straight down in the cold air, probably screaming and knowing beyond a doubt that you were about to die. I need to feel it, feel that, so that I can face myself in the mirror every day knowing that that person staring hauntingly back at me is punished. For what, I can't sensibly figure out, but I know I need to feel it. She was my sister, I'm never going to be the same, and I need to feel it.
I don't know how many days it's been. All I know is it's 5:03am right now and my shoulders are groaning with the weight of what night holds for me in sleep, which in short, is terrifying. The nightmares, over and over again... I'd rather stay awake, robotically going about the motions, nodding and smiling for the show and dance, then with the welcoming solitude of the click of the front door, I sit quietly and stare outside the window, crying into Jenkins' fur.
It's a surprise that I chose to write. The house move was... the most drawn out house move yet, and I'm glad it's over. The apartment is still a total mess, boxes piled on top of boxes on top of more boxes, but at least I have a bed under a roof, with a steady-ish job schedule, and a new job to boot. But you are still dead. So, what's the point, really, that there are things to be happy for when you being gone are all of my reasons to be sad?
Some days it feels more bearable, with the cats and Jenkins by my side, as well as the assortment of other animals I may be in contact with any given day. Some days, not so much. I just keep smoking, losing myself in heavy coughing fits, because I'd take anything than the constant emotional rabbit hole of compulsive questions like WHY DID THIS HAPPEN and how in the WORLD it could statistically happen to you. My sister.
You inspired so many of my old social media passwords growing up. The puns I would make on your nickname, all of which I would share with you later, laughingly, teasing you and finding mirth in watching you react in mock younger sister rage. I miss you so much, and the very many moments that shaped our childhoods as we grew into young women, discovering life with me first holding the door open, palm reaching out for you, my number two. I'm so sad every time I realize how I will never make more memories with you again. I am left with these finite, already-made experiences that I can only ever just relive in the confines of my own mind... Which is okay, I guess, because I don't have a say in it. I just miss you. My sister.
We would stay up making instant noodles until the roosters crowed outside and the Islamic call to prayer would trumpet from down the road at the BU3 mosque. We've both watched that mosque swell under renovation, with new room additions to accommodate larger crowds during religious festivals. And now alone I will drive past it when I return home, the colorful mosque spires tunneling upwards into the clouds that will never again oversee you and I hand-in-hand, the way it did before when we were children, when we were teenagers, when we were young women. No more. I feel your loss so deeply and I don't know how to begin processing the hole I feel inside of me. This emptiness knows no words and certainly I feel has no bounds. It is all encompassing, and the pain in my heart is so engulfing. The memory of you shreds my heart into pieces.
Have I won in life if I made my therapist cry? Because I did, earlier today when we had our first call since you died. She was in so much shock when I tried to unravel the confusing and despairing story of how my younger sister is dead. Then her voice cracked and I genuinely felt bad, the way I've been feeling bad explaining the tragedy to my friends and co-workers, that I have to be the bearer of such traumatic news. It's a lot. And I am feeling... A lot of emotions that eventually just mask themselves as numb productivity, and a new avoidance to daily showers and other hygiene administrations. This is a cosmic joke, isn't it, the universe taking away the passion and fun I feel in my veins ticking tasks off my lists and planning for future Jaime. I always wholly invest in myself. And now I do not; I try my best to get the day over with as quickly as I can, mindlessly, overwhelmingly, and numbly, day to day to day. It's ongoing, this requiem I sing alone to you, and every word stings.
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