It has not been a summer of good news. A friend wrote me yesterday, saying that she needed to look for a flight back immediately: "my sister passed away, all of a sudden."
My friend just turned an aunt the day before. How did this happen? "She was just talking to my parents and suddenly couldn't catch her breath. And then..."
"I really don't know what to say. I'm very, very sorry for your loss."
"She only saw her new born baby for a split second. Didn't even get a chance to hold it."
The conversation was cut short. I did not know what to say or do to make her feel better; she said she felt alright, just very, very surreal.
Surreal? Must be, but it could have happened to anyone. It could have been my sister, who also just gave birth to a baby girl. We are also family of two daughters, which, according to the discourse, is "a family without descendants. A family doomed to lose its family name."
One daughter stayed in the hometown, got married there, stayed close to the parents as discourse dictates; the other, the wandering one, indefinitely relocated to Europe.
Her sister was my sister's age. I've always been seized by the fear of losing an aging family member when I am abroad, but who would have imagined that it could be the younger one. Two generations younger. Our generation. Our sibling.
What will become of her? them? the baby? Will they subconsciously put the blame on the baby? The baby will never get to know her mother. Will she grow up with the sense of guilt that her mother died because of her? How does it feel like to suddenly lose a sibling, no matter close or distant? Losing my quasi genetic copy, with almost the same flesh and blood. It would be as if a part of me is eternally lost. Life would never be complete. It wouldn't be.
"Farewell, Europe," said my friend. She does not know if she is ever coming back. She has to mend the missing part; her family needs her, the discourse instructs a homecoming-- no longer in the form of yearning, but obligation.
It has not been a summer of good news. My grandfather passed away early last month. In the meantime, a close friend's grandfather was terminally ill and eventually left her last week. Her roommate, also a common friend, lost her aunt around the same time. And finally, this friend's loss of her sister that rendered me sleepless last night, restlessly imagining all the possibilities.
I tried to distract myself by reading commentaries on Loïe Fuller's dance and came across the term danse macabre.
The idea was not macabre, I found it soothing.
In the end, they will all join hands in the danse macabre.
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