Feb. 26, 1999, San Francisco and New York

By Patricia D’Ascoli

It is a Tuesday evening in late February when my husband and three young sons fiercely hug me good-bye, unwilling to send me off on a journey that I clearly don’t want to make. The boys can’t grasp why I have to leave right away, in such a hurry; my husband understands too well what my haste signifies. I must catch a flight to San Francisco tonight because my sister is dying. And I need to bring her home.

As I sit in the airport waiting to board my plane, alone, filled with fear and sadness, I am afraid of what I will find when I arrive. Although I saw her less than two months ago, the cancer has ravaged her body so that she can hardly breathe at all now, and needs oxygen all the time. She spoke to me in a breathless whisper this morning, finally agreeing to let me make the trip.

How can I even begin to understand that death is imminent for my 53-year-old sister? I am ill-equipped to deal with this reality and yet here I am, her much younger sister, heading off with uncertainty to relocate my lonely sibling to what she considers a better place to leave this world. I seriously question whether my home is really a better place for her to die, and yet I know that this is both the least and the most I can do for her.

Westward bound on a dubious mission, I alternate between scribbling thoughts furiously in my journal and skimming “Death – The Final Stage of Growth,” a book my minister has assured me is required reading for anyone who is about to experience the loss of a loved one. These seem like inadequate tools when grappling with a subject as large as death, but when I happen upon a particular phrase in the book, suddenly a thin veneer of understanding develops. “Death is the ultimate of all separations. We have little choice as to whether or not the separation will occur. However, what is in our control is the quality of the separation experience – making it life affirming or life denying.” I choose life affirming and hope that such will be the case.

On the other side of the country my brother awaits my arrival, and although he is geographically much closer to our sister, the emotional ties are much stronger between my sister and me, despite our 18 year age difference. My brother can only serve as a conduit in this exchange, speeding and driving haphazardly into the night to a place neither of us wants to be, our fear of death a palpable living thing sitting on the seat between us.

We enter her dimly lit apartment to find her lying on the couch - a pale, sickly figure focused on breathing. The sound of the steady hiss and pulse of an oxygen machine fills the air, making us realize how tenuous her hold on life is right now. But I am here and she is coherent enough to realize this fact. And all that remains is to make arrangements to successfully transport her 3,000 miles across the country.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen complications, two full days will elapse before the designated departure date. Each moment of the intervening 48 hours seems like an eternity, and yet, these hours are a gift, not so much to me, but to all of my sister’s friends who come to say good-bye. I can only sit by, quietly observing the somber parade of visitors who embrace their dying friend for the last time.

Finally, when the morning of our flight arrives, I am afraid it is already too late when I approach my sister on the couch. But I am wrong – against all odds, there is still life enough for her to get dressed with my help and to make the two-hour drive to the airport. The sun is just beginning to rise; its brilliance and affirmation of a new day at odds with our mission to outrace death. Does my sister see the beauty of her last sunrise?

As we board the plane and my brother lifts her into her first class seat, he is overcome with sorrow and weeps openly as we hug and say good-bye. I am struck by the irony of the accommodations that will go unappreciated by my sister – cloth napkins and sterling flatware will do little for a dying woman. I am intensely aware of the stares of the other passengers whose fear is clearly written on their faces, and yet I empathize, for no one is more afraid than I am.

How long we sit in our seats that morning is hard to say, and by some miracle, my sister is able to eat some of the proffered breakfast strawberries and even manages to acknowledge that we are going home. But when she indicates that she “has to go” I do not understand what this really means as I escort her to the restroom where she collapses. Her lifeless body is carried out by a steward and placed on the floor. She is gone.

Nothing prepares us for the shock of death, even when we are expecting it to happen. When it occurs in an unfortunate situation, such as an airplane, however, there is a feeling of being utterly alone, bereft of solace and in my case, as if to blame. My decision to make this journey was obviously ill-advised by its outcome.

“What would you like us to do?” asks the co-pilot. I am told that we can land at the nearest airport or we can continue on our non-stop destination to New York. It is clear to me that for the sake of all the passengers on that plane, there is no other choice than but to continue to New York. There is no sense in landing somewhere else. This much I understand.

How much more I comprehend that morning is questionable, but the meaning and manner of my sister’s death became a subject of great debate to me in the ensuing days and weeks. Looking for some deep, cosmic meaning, I failed to realize the simple truth, a truth that I have since embraced. The words of Kübler Ross that I had read days before my sister’s passing were there to sustain me. I finally understood that by attempting to make the journey home with my sister, I had granted her last wish, and had made our separation life affirming.

Patricia D’Ascoli is a freelance journalist who writes for newspapers and magazines and also publishes her own literary newsletter, Connecticut Muse. She is the author of Home Is Where the Humor Is, a collection of humorous vignettes about family life.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 | Email This Post

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