a letter to my sister, who is slipping away

My dearest Preeti,

I’ve spent the last seven days crying round the clock and wishing for your peaceful departure.

What kind of sister wishes for her sister to die? What does that make me? A monster. But it is true. For a week now, ever since I heard, I’ve been praying for you to slip away peacefully, quietly. It would be a reflection of your life in a way, you know?

 

I cry as I write this and crying seems to have become my coping mechanism to deal with your going away. I wanted to write to you while you’re still here so I can talk to you in my head, even if you are already slipping into a coma and can no longer read. So, here I am.

Maybe I will ask Pratish to read this to you while you sleep.

Yesterday, on the video call, I watched him pat your forehead, ask you if you want water, rub your legs. You lay there unaware of us. Or maybe you were listening. We will never know.

I put my lips to the image of you on my phone and kissed my phone several times, knowing it was my phone I was kissing and you were out there in the hospice, just waiting. I can never kiss or hold you again.

 

From across this great physical distance between us, I do not know what any of us can do to bring you comfort. But here we are, fighting among ourselves over what’s good for you and what isn’t. As if we know what you want. We talk about what should have been. As though that would change anything about your illness.

When you came home in 2023, I had told you to come back. I had said we would live our lives together as two old, single ladies and you had said you would, for a moment, and then said it was too late. You had built a world for yourself in London. You said London was home.

 

I wonder who is part of your London home. Who is in that world of yours, I will never know. All these years of sketchy conversations, I’ve wondered who your friends are. I can barely remember you talking about your friends. I remember your cats though. Five of them. Your babies.

It is only now that I know why you had to give them up. It wasn’t because you were moving. It was because cancer had started gnawing at you and you could no longer care for them. And yet, you loved them. Like you had loved Jimmy, all the way until it was time to put him down.

I know that pain, you know? Coz I had to put my Goose down too. Again, what kind of mothers put their babies down? I guess mothers who are left with no choice but to let go. Love is also letting go, my friend Priti says.

Ever since I found out you have been at the hospice, I’ve been playing scenes from our childhood in my head. I see you in your school uniform, mostly. Neatly ironed white shirt and the grey skirt wrapped around her thin waist. What a looker you have always been!

And your hair! You have the blackest, silkiest, shiniest hair I ever saw. It was your beauty! And then you came home to us in 2023 in a wig. Your head, like a mowed lawn. I asked what happened and you said you had been on radiation therapy for bone TB. You lied. You didn’t say it was cancer. You didn’t tell me you had undergone mastectomy when you opened your suitcase and showed me a bunch of 36D bras for me to take. They’re your size, I said, not mine.

How was I to know your bras no longer serve the same function for you? That they’re now a sign of something that has been lost.

You didn’t tell me you had been sick. I know now that you were trying to protect me from grief that was hurtling our way.

I know nothing about you, Preeti.

Poonamdi still tells me you have jaundice. How am I to make sense of anything?

Last night, after our call, I started hyperventilating. Seeing you lay there wan-looking , bleary-eyed, has been really hard. Every call, I see you grow more distant. And something has been breaking in me these days as I think of how you’re no longer going to be around. The sister who calls me baby, gypsy, darling, Pabhi. No one has such names for me in this world. No one.

With you, I’ve always felt unconditionally loved and understood, even if we didn’t talk so often. I don’t think anyone’s understood me like that, you know?

I sat up till 3am last night, reading our chats. Every time I asked you how you were doing, you said you had many challenges but you were coping well. And you always had nice things to say. You were proud of me.

I don’t know, this letter is incoherent too, like my emotions these days.

One moment, I’m crying, another moment, I’m thinking of the boys who crushed on you. I’m thinking of the poems you used to know by heart. Some of them, I still know from hearing you say them aloud.

The Yak by Hilaire Belloc.

The time you went to Pokhara, I was so envious and I hated you for not taking me with you. You were ten then and it was probably the only time you ever went to Pokhara. I wish now that I could share all my Pokhara lone trips with you-- over two dozen of them.

I’m thinking of the silly things you used to say. You’re the girl who first talked to me about masturbation. And yet, when we spoke in 2023, you said it was hard to believe life had passed you by without a lover. How is it, you asked me, that you had never had a lover? I still have no experience of sex, you said.

Preeti. 

 

I always thought you and I would grow old together. 

I saw you come and live here in KTM. I saw us grow old together. But those are images I was conjuring inside my head. I know you will never grow old now. You will always be 48. You turned 48 today. Happy Birthday, Preeti! I love you so much.

Yours,

Gypsy  

P.S. Had I been in London, I would have brought you some flowers. Here, I've stolen these online.