The phone shrieks, startling me awake. Who could be calling at this ungodly hour?
I hear the answering machine click on downstairs and my mother’s voice broadcast into the darkness of the house: “TOM! Pick up the phone!...Shit.” She hangs up, and my stomach is in my throat. My mother is in the hospital with my sister, and I am terrified. Why is she calling now; why does she sound so urgent? I silently beg my dad to wake in his bedroom beneath mine.
I don’t have time to process the thoughts. The phone is screaming again; I leap out of bed and am halfway down the stairs before the second ring. I yank the phone from its base and shout “HELLO!”
“Saragetyourdad,” my mother commands.
I peer into his bedroom and cry out: “Dad!”
A figure bolts upright in the inky blackness. “Mom’s on the phone!”
The phone is out of my hands before I know what’s happening, and I slip into the shadows on the wall. Please, please, please I plead in unformed prayer.
“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” My dad is saying words into the phone.
I am just a shadow on the wall; I numb myself and melt into the framework so I don’t have to face whatever horror is coming from the other end of the line.
My dad is moving about the house frantically, but I am just a shadow on the wall. He’s throwing things in a bag, fumbling into his clothes, grabbing his keys.
My sister is in the hospital for another round of chemotherapy. She is supposed to come home today, but instead she has slipped into septic shock. A blood infection is ravaging her body, her immune system too weak from the poisons to fight it off. They are moving her into ICU.
She was supposed to come home today!
When I get to the hospital, she has a breathing tube down her throat and cords coming out of her at all angles, but she is conscious.
I don’t want her to know I’m scared.
“Did you miss me?” I ask her, and stroke her hair.
She nods. A tear rolls down her cheek.
She can’t say anything because she has a fucking breathing tube down her throat and is too weak to open her eyes.
I’m fumbling for words, any words to dull this pain, any words to give her strength.
I am with her.
I chatter on to her for the next 5 days, even after the doctors administer so many drugs that she slips into a coma. The drugs make her smell like celery.
I feel it my duty to tell her things, as if that connects her to this realm.
I watch my family and her friends come and go: only 2 visitors allowed in ICU at a time! The others can take their turns; I’m with my sister.
We don’t have to speak; she is my built in best friend and I know she needs me.
I do not leave her side.
I rub her stiff hands and feet.
I babble on and on and on so I don’t have to feel the weight of what is happening.
On the 5th day, I watch them turn off the machines breathing for my sister.
I stroke her hair and tell her I love her.
I watch as she turns red, then blue, then purple, every cell in her body screaming for oxygen and I’m screaming inside wake up wake up wake up!!
She didn’t wake up.
My sister was 17 years old, and she was dead.
I spent the next years slogging through the motions.
I finished high school.
I went to college.
I dated boys who were not nice.
I ignored the glaring hole in my life and pretended I could be normal.
I cried and slept for what felt like 10 straight years.
Waking up was the worst, because in my dream-like state I forgot for a second that anything had happened. Remembering my sister was dead shattered my heart every morning.
I compared myself to other people; why couldn’t I have what they had? Why was life so easy for them?
I could never chat with my sister again, even though I would reflexively reach for the phone to call her when I heard her songs on the radio.
I could never have a whole, happy life, because there was a hole in my heart that was impossible to fill.
I dreaded human interaction. People are nosy when you meet them; innocently, someone would ask about my family and I would burst into tears. That was embarrassing on top of painful, so I withdrew from social activities. My immense grief became my ever-present companion. My parents were broken; I avoided them too.
Living was too painful for me. Life was hell because everything made me think of her, but thinking of her hurt too deeply!
I wanted to die so I could see my sister again, even though I had no idea what happened after death. I ached to tell her I loved her; I needed to apologize for our childish fights and any suffering I caused her. I wanted to play and sing and dance and dress up and dream with her. I wanted to make cookies and braid each others hair and fall asleep holding hands. I wanted to tell her about major life events like graduation, and I wanted her sisterly advice on affairs of the heart. I hurt to think about getting married one day without her as my maid of honor, or to have babies without an aunt.
I couldn’t think of the future, the past, or the present. I disconnected and shut myself off.
If only I could be normal! If only it was enough to get a degree, get a career, get married, buy a house, have children! I envied others for effortlessly accepting and enjoying the standard American way, because why couldn’t it be easy for ME?? Why did my family deserve this??
Oh god, if only I could be normal I was crying again one night after another loser had shown his colors. And that’s when it happened:
"Peru!" whispered my heart.
"What the fuck do you mean, Peru?!" said my mind. "You can’t go to Peru!"
"What is can’t?" said my body.
Plenty of people go to Peru; it’s a whole country FULL of people! It’s humanly possible, and I’m a human, and dammit I wanted to go!! It was the first thing I yearned for in as long as I could remember, and man did that feel better than that misery I was used to.
Here I had been dead and numb for so long, to have this magical, sensual word--Perú!--coursing through my channels stirred something in me I didn’t even know existed. My skin tingled. For the first time I could remember, I wasn’t restricted. Sweet mother of god, I was ALIVE!
I tried to ignore it, just like I did with the rest of my life, but it kept repeating itself. At work: Peru. At the park: Peru. At home: Peru. At the store: Peru.
I wanted to know triumph, I wanted to know the glory of achieving the impossible! I wanted to break barriers and L-I-V-E! Even if I failed, so what? At least I would have tried something in life, rather than drowning in depression.
Oh god, I was going to have to talk to people! What if they asked me about my family? What if I cried? What if I wanted to lay in bed all day in a foreign country and waste my time just like at home? What if I got lost? What if I got kidnapped and sold as a sex slave?
The fear didn’t matter, because I was ignited! I had a passion and a vision; I was compelled. I got drunk on dreaming of travel; it felt great to imagine myself in the rainforest, climbing the Andes, and searching for Incan treasure. It was too strong to ignore, so I trusted my gut--the first instinct I allowed myself to indulge, and I fell in love with FEELING!
I bought a one way ticket and took myself Peru 3 weeks later. I didn’t even have a hotel, but I figured it out.
In another country, I got a fresh start. No one knew who I was, so I embraced the chance to leave behind the hopeless shell I had been and became someone I wanted to be around. I went with the flow. I trusted the Universe would provide for me, and I accepted the opportunities that presented themselves. I wandered in the jungle. I climbed the mountains. I swam in the Amazon. I used ayahuasca and San Pedro.
I found more: I stayed in the jungle home of a woman who cured cancer.
I met a woman who cured cancer!
She cured her own cancer, so she devoted her life to healing others. I had no idea cancer cures existed! I thought cancer was this terrible, horrible, irreversible death sentence. It was paradigm shifting to realize you could go from cancer to non-cancer and achieve health! Once my mind was melted, I met more and more people who had cured cancer...and Crohn’s disease and diabetes and heart disease and malaria and many other diseases.
It became blatantly obvious that everything had led me to Peru for a reason, and I had to go through the shit in order to understand the message. I couldn’t have related to any hippie dippy telling me you can cure diseases with mere plants; I sure as hell wouldn’t have believed anything about energy work had I not experienced it for myself! I was a highly educated lady, for heaven’s sake--if it wasn’t in the textbooks, it couldn’t have existed in my realm. There’s no space for “sacred” and “blessings” and healing in dental school! I had to have heartbreak, I had to have devastation, I had to have my entire world burn so I could accept the Truth when it presented itself and rise from the ashes stronger than ever.
One thing led to another, and I found myself learning yoga and Reiki and deeksha and experiencing deep, soul healing. I was not destined to be “normal”, so life made sure I wouldn’t have the 2.5 kids and picket fence American dream. My life has more purpose than that.
I lived in Peru for a year. Frequently, I hiked to the Inca ruins called the Temple of the Moon, where I gazed over the Sacred Valley and my beloved city of Cusco, and I thought about my sister.
I gave thanks for her presence in my life. I realized that without her AND her death, I would never be the adventuress & journeyman I had become. I could not understand the miracles I witnessed from my old understanding and craving for normalcy. I realized I was not The Girl Who’s Sister Died as I had defined myself, but rather that was just an element of my story that led me to real healing. I gave thanks for transformation.
Today, I am grateful for my sister’s shining presence in my life, and I can celebrate the time we had together. I don’t mourn what I lost, although sometimes I am still angry at the medical mafia for suppressing cures. Now, it is fuel for my passion. I wake up fresh, energized, and driven to share REAL health and wellness with others. I devote my time and resources in service to bringing the most successful options I have found to people.
No matter how dark it appears, there IS hope!