My elder sister passed away early this month. She was 70.
On the morning of November 3, my younger sister found her fallen on the floor of the bathroom, bleeding from the head. She was dead on arrival at the hospital.
My sister had a chronic heart problem like my mother. In the last 10 years, she blacked out and fell a few times on the road and was taken by kind bystanders to hospital. Apparently, this time she fell and hit her head when she was alone in the bathroom at night.
Due to various reasons, my family did not live together until we got into a single-room subsidized housing in 1960. Since I left Hong Kong in 1970, my elder sister and I were only together for about 10 years and that was almost 40 years ago. We were both young and those were happy days. She had a set of beautiful waist-length long hair, straight and shiny, inherited from our mother. She was proud of it and never cut it short.
When she was a little over two years old, the Imperial Japanese Army marched into Hong Kong and stayed for the infamous ”three years and eight months”. She must have a very tough early childhood under the Japanese: mal-nourished and insecure, which must had some impact on her later life. She was actually quite clever, but unfortunately at her time there was very little educational opportunity, especially for girls, after the war. On looking back, we baby-boomers are really blessed to be born in the time of peace and then provided with a good education system to give us good opportunities.
She loved me as her little brother very much. For all I can remember, she had never yelled at me and we never had fights. We both have the same dry skin. In the morning, when she put on lotions, she always got some and asked me to come over to put some on my face. She loved to eat snacks, especially the dried fruit type. Whenever she bought snacks home, she always shared with me. After I left Hong Kong in 1970, the only time we were close together again was in 1992 winter, when she stopped by Vancouver on a 7-day North American tour. I asked her to forfeit her tour that day and I drove her around to visit various attractions in Vancouver.
In the Spring of 2007, a year after I retired, there was news from home that she fell on the street and was taken to hospital. It then dawned on me that life was short: we were both getting old. Then I subscribed to the Telus Long-Distance Call Plan. Hong Kong is only 5 cents per minute. (Ironically, Canada is 7 cents). When she got out of the hospital, I started calling her long distance every other Saturday morning. 7 AM Saturday here in Vancouver is 10 PM Saturday in Hong Kong. We chatted for about 45 minutes each time. There was no particular topic to talk about each time, just free chats, about our daily lives, the weather, the news and the people. The whole idea was just to keep up the sibling contact.
In the Fall of 2007, when we switched back to Standard Time, one morning when I called, she asked me immediately whether I was too busy. Then I realized that she had waited for a whole hour for my call that time. Hong Kong did not use Summer Daylight Saving Hours. Since that day, I knew that I should not miss the call time, so I had to set two separate alarm clocks to make sure I wake up at 6:45AM. Otherwise, I usually wake up at 8 or 9 during these retired days. Last week when I called my younger sister, she mentioned that my elder sister would sit by the phone every other Saturday night to wait for my call. I am glad that I did not disappoint her right to the end.
Now she passed away so suddenly, it is unfortunate that we were not there to accompany her in her last few steps of her life journey and listen to her last words. The only consolation was that she did not have to suffer a protracted period of painful illness as many other terminal patients.
My elder sister was a devoted Buddhist. Starting on the day that she passed away, I burnt three pieces of incense every morning, bowing three times as I placed them in an ash pot by the window. I will do it for 49 days.
One may ask: are you getting religious, or even superstitious? No.
It does not matter what I believe in. I do it for my beloved sister.
Traveller's space 