How did you get here?

Inventing a new world after tragedy

4.20.2023 - This essay is a work in progress and will be edited and improved as I continue on my writing journey but I feel called to share it today in its unfinished glory, on what would have been Jenn’s 27th birthday.

“After tragedies, one has to invent a new world, knit it or embroider, make it up. It's not gonna be given to you because you deserve it, it doesn't work that way. You have to imagine something that doesn't exist and dig a cave into the future and demand space. It's a territorial hope affair. At the time, that digging is utopian but in the future, it will become your reality.”
- Björk

“I'm fallen and I can't get up.”

That was the caption of the last Instagram post my little sister posted within the 24 hours that she died by suicide.

The first few years people asked what happened to her, I’d say she committed suicide. Committed. As if she had committed a crime- an offense, a fault. It’s been 10 years since she died by suicide and now I rarely use the word committed to describe what happened. But sometimes it feels like the only word in the English vocabulary to convey how abruptly she left and how desolate life can feel without her.

When people ask me about myself I start by explaining I was born in L.A. but moved to Canada at a young age, how I was plant-based for five years, and can’t touch gluten with a 10-foot pole. As conversation unfolds over lunch or lattes, I hold my breath anticipating the moment when I’ll get asked if I have siblings. “I have six siblings!” I’d say, watching their eyes widen and mouths drop. Are you close? Are they older or younger? Where do they all live? I’d then need to quickly calculate whether to say two out of six of them have passed, fearful if I brought it up I would be trauma dumping onto my unsuspecting listener and dampening the conversation.

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Leading up to her passing I was more preoccupied with Tumblr, my boyfriend, and sex than being a doting older sister. We could go weeks at a time without saying a word to each other. Some grunts here and there cursing each other’s existence and being annoyed at the way each other breathed. At the time it felt normal. How sisters are supposed to act when they are wicked, angsty teenagers, where in the future we’d look back as civil adults and laugh at the hell we put each other through. A cruel phase all siblings, especially sisters born a year and a half apart, go through and mercifully grow out of.

Some days I tend to be unforgiving of myself and replay the cache of verbal (occasionally physical) combat we had, the moments I wish I could take back, where I’d tell her she was an accident child, which she’d then promptly launch back at me “I wish you were never born” but when my mind wants to protest from heartache and the metaphorical rain clouds begin to part, I can remember the memories where we were inseparable. Two peas in a pod. Danica and Jennyca.

The times we’d race our bikes down Shawnessy Drive, sneak 5-cent candies from our mother’s corner store, duel Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, pick raspberries from our backyard and perform our favorite pop songs. The fond memories exceed the bad 10-1, but rewiring my brain to remember this is like trying to put a fitted sheet on your bed, blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.

The night before her death, things were tense at home because my sister had not been answering her phone and we had no idea where she was. My brother eventually found her at a friend’s house and she told him she’d stay the night there and be home the next day.

The next day, I had my usual breakfast of half a cup of egg whites, three slices of turkey bacon, and gluten-free toast. Around midday, my sister still wasn’t home but I thought nothing of it and frankly didn’t care.

That evening there was a knock on the front door. My sister had a house key so there’d be no reason for her to knock. Conceivably it could be my mother, she habitually was misplacing her keys. I open the door and there are two policemen with their hats so low on their faces that I could barely see their eyes.

“Is your mom home?”

“No, she’s not”

“Ok, thank you”

The conversation was short and left me confused. I closed the door.

I called my mom to let her know the police came to our door, looking for her. The line connects but no audible words come from the other side of the phone. Only the desperate, haunting wails of my mother sobbing. I yell into the phone confused, begging to know what’s wrong. Click. The line hangs up and I am looking at the reflection of my dazed face on the phone screen.

Somewhere between the call disconnecting and me rushing out of the house, I end up in a car with my older brother, Matthew driving to the hospital. Still unknown to what awaits us there, neither of us speaks the whole drive.

We arrive and fumble at the meter to pay for parking. I grab the receipt and think to myself how absurd it is to pay $15 to visit the newly born, sick, and dying. A nurse leads us into a fluorescent-lit room and I notice my mother already there, her face so red and puffy it was unidentifiable. If it wasn’t for the scent of my mother’s perfume and her signature style of ballet flats and crew socks I wouldn’t have recognized her.

Still confused as to why we are at the hospital, I begin to walk across the room to console my mother for the yet-to-be-disclosed tragedy. Before I can get there a nurse brings me aside and in a quiet voice explains to me that my sister had died.

Two years after my sister passed, our older brother, Billy Jay who lived in the Philippines unexpectedly passed away too. Because we lived in different parts of the world, we weren’t close but I imagine them taking care of each other, wherever they both are now.

Every year on my sister’s birthday I unpack the box that stores my grief. I watch a 10-minute movie that my cousin put together for her funeral, where pictures of my sister fade in and out while “River Flows In You” by Yiruma fills the room. The pictures are in chronological order from 1-week old baby to the most recent photos of her in a beautiful red gown at her sweet 16 birthday party. Some years I can watch the video once, tell her I love her, and be filled with gratitude that God made her my sister. Other years I miserably and inconsolably watch on repeat until I’ve reached my daily sodium intake swallowing my own tears.

Over time the tiny, paper-thin box I placed my grief into has changed. The grief remains unaltered in size but now it’s nested inside a new, larger, corrugated box. The grief itself will never shrink nor do I want it to.

After hearing my story people kindly commend my strength and perseverance and often ask How did you get here despite it all?

I committed intention.

Committed healing.

Committed forgiveness.

Committed courage.

Committed gratitude.

Committed to me.

I live and will continue to live with ferocious intentionality, certain that when I knock on heaven’s doors, my sister will be there to greet me and tell me I lived a life beautiful and bold enough for the both of us.

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