Yes, I Had a Brother. ｜嗯，我曾經有哥哥。

I was exhausted. It was the morning after I had come back to school from thanksgiving break. I  don’t remember when I slept, but at some point in the night I must’ve managed to lose consciousness and drift away. I felt my phone vibrate under my comforter, but, I was exhausted.  I let it ring. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was only around nine o’clock. In hindsight, I guess, I already knew who it was, and why they were calling. Instead of going back to sleep I sat up in my bed, opened my laptop and waited for the next call. I felt the vibration again, saw the phone screen light up, and the name Linda flashed across the screen. I picked up the phone, but didn’t say anything I just listened. We didn’t even exchange words for the first ten seconds, I just held the phone listening to her breathe heavily into the microphone. My memory of that conversation is muddy now.  All I can remember is an exchanging of Hello’s, followed by some apologies, and finally the message she called to relay, “Quee passed”.

My family hasn’t really celebrated the holidays for a while now. We don’t have an elaborate feast for thanksgiving, or even put up a Christmas Tree anymore. I couldn’t finger out a particular reason for that. I guess when you get older, each new day starts to bleed into the next and each day seems just like the day before. The monotony of daily life seems to drain the holiday spirit out of you. So, I didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary when I came home for Thanksgiving break that year. I came home, my mom gave me her usual spiel about my classes and my friends and all that. But whenever she feels anxious, she has a habit of raising the tone of her voice, to be kind of like an early hollywood housewife. I guess it’s her way of coping with things. I asked her what’s going on? All she told me was that my brother wasn’t feeling well lately. I put my bags down, and went to my brothers room. Nauseating is the best way I can describe the smell of the room. I sat next to him and asked him what’s going on, and hadn’t really heard much. His physical condition had visibly deteriorated, but at the time I wasn’t aware to what extent. I don’t know what it is about my family, but we all have a habit of understating the seriousness of our situation. “Nothing major, I’m having some kidney problems and they want me to go on dialysis”, he said. “What’s the smell in the room coming from then?” , he pointed to the bucket next to the door and told me had been  vomiting a bit lately, and he had been having trouble eating. But he smiled at me and told me he’s in a good state of mind. That’s what really fucked me up the most I guess. In this  pungently putrid, vomit scented room, with a bulged out abdomen, and feet swelled up like balloons almost at the point of bursting, he was calm.

I still feel guilty, I guess. The mood in our house those days was solemn with a harrowing undertone. Without words we all somehow communicated our thoughts and feelings. My mom with her high pitched voice and meticulous cleaning. My brother with his uncharacteristically affectionate words and gestures. And me, spending all of my time silently lurking around the house in the morning and staying outside until the morning sun peeked through the clouds the next day. I wasn’t willing, or able, rather, to deal with my feelings at the time. So I tried to find things to keep myself mentally and physically disassociated from an impending reality. In some way I succeeded I guess.

Black Friday rolled around, and I stayed out until around three or four in the morning. I creeped through the door and laid in my bed. I was sleeping, but his voice shook me from my sleep. He was calling us to his room, my mom and I went and stood at his bedside. In a gentle voice he told us he loved us, no matter what arguments or disagreements we had in the past, he wanted to tell us that he loved us. If you’ve ever experienced the death of a loved one I guess you can understand my feelings at the time. I guess the best way to describe it is to imagine your emotions as a fire, and your psyche being the house that is engulfed in its flames. You try your absolute best to extinguish the flames using a bucket of water. In your heart you somehow believe if you exert more effort you can save your house, but in the back of your mind you know it’s futile. I took those words as an acknowledgement to himself that there now exists a possible future in which he no longer exists. But I refused to acknowledge his acknowledgement, and pushed it to the back corners of my mind, and went to my room and slept.

“Quee passed”, I held the phone in my hands and this phrase kept bouncing around in my head, over, and over, and over again. She was crying through the phone telling me how they were supposed to go to the hospital today to get a check up. He had an afternoon appointment at two o’clock. She told me how my mom went to check on him in the morning and saw that he didn’t look right, and how she called the ambulance. She told me how he talked to my mom and the emergency responders as they took his pulse and put him on the stretcher.  He told them his name, and how he was feeling. She told me how my mom rode with him in the ambulance until his heart stopped beating. They never made it to the hospital before he breathed in his last breath.

At some point in the story, the conversation ended for me, and we were off the phone. I didn’t cry, I didn’t even tear up. I texted my childhood best friend telling him, “Quee passed away”, but he didn’t respond, at least, immediately. I called another friend and went over to her dorm, without saying anything. She didn’t ask me to tell her what was wrong when I arrived, we just sat in silence until we ended up at the dining hall a few hours later with other friends. In the dining hall my best friend called me and he asked me what happened, and that was it. I lost all the energy I had to preserve myself. I cried and cried and cried more. When he asked me about it, more than my Aunt actually telling me, it brought the reality and gravity of the situation upon me. When I am not in the best of moods, It’s not very hard to tell. I kept thinking of excuses to make when someone would ask me what’s wrong. I didn’t want to have a pity party thrown for me, I didn’t want to put others in the awkward position of trying to find words to comfort me, I just didn’t want to think of the situation at all. But of course, everyone wants to appear in front of you at the exact moment you’d wish you could disappear.

It may seem kind of childish, and idiotic but at that time the one thought that wouldn’t stop circling around in my head was: “Am I the only child now?” I kept thinking what I should say when someone asks me if I have any siblings. When I came to Asia four months ago, I began to hate this question. Of course, I don’t hold any disdain towards the people who ask it, obviously, I just hate how this simple question has become so loaded. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve come that far from last year in terms of dealing with the passing of my brother. In some ways, I still deny his death in a variety of ways and I guess it’s how I continue to cope. I guess that’s the reason why I hate this question so much, I feel like it transports me back to that morning, and challenges me to finally accept and come to terms with it. But I guess I’m still not ready for that, so I still don’t know what to say. Up until now, to be honest, my answer has been a simple, no, I am the only child. But now my answers borders on, I had a sibling. Yes, I had a brother.