one last cigarette

At my sister’s grave on her birthday, the first one since she died, I was glad of one thing: that by the time we lost her, she was no longer afraid.

A long wasting-away offers that mercy to the dying, at least – that lengthy loosening of a tight grip on life, that slow slide into a silent, staring insensibility, eyes open but seeing something altogether other, and then slipping away completely.

But I remember a time sitting in her driveway – actually, me standing, her sitting on the fold-down seat of the walker she had to use by then to get around – while she smoked the one cigarette she’d begged from her husband before we made our way slowly out of the kitchen door, through the yard and garage and into a sunny patch near the sidewalk. She shuffled out there, keeping up a steady chatter, set the brake, folded down the seat, and lit up.

That day she was shaky, literally, always slightly nodding, her eyes giant behind her classes. When she spoke, her words were slurred, but she was still sharp – inside, she’d been making multilingual puns and little jokes in front of her husband and daughter. In the quiet of the moment alone afforded me by accompanying her to the driveway, though, she was less sanguine. She was terrified of dying. Not for the reasons you might think, because who honestly really wants to stop living? I know I sometimes quake at the thought of ceasing to exist, of closing my eyes on the birds and other wonders of this living world. Instead, she spoke haltingly of the need to stay strong for her husband. When I suggested that maybe she could let him be strong enough for her right now, she ignored me.

We stood out there and I listened to her talk about her fear, selfishly relishing the blast of reality falling from her lips. I was so used, by that time, to the smoke-and-mirrors of being around her, the constant bafflement induced by her choices, the way we would, during our rare visits, speak of nothing, nothing of any significance. In early days, I’d arrive with the vente decaf triple-shot mocha with extra whipped cream that she’d called to command on my way down; mostly the time was taken up by admiring the antics of her daughter, my niece, naturally a gifted and affectionate child who was, on the one hand, allowed to run a bit amok and, on the other, chastised for the strangest things, I thought – sitting on the floor, for example, or touching the ground with her hand. A child who at that time knew her mother was sick but had no idea she was dying. She’d never know my sister as she had been and really was – smart, artistic, great at everything she set her mind to. And also a bit of a know-it-all and show-off, let’s be honest.

My sister sat there on the seat of her walker, wearing a gray turtleneck that day which only accentuated the way the various medications made her face puffy. She was wearing the expensive jeans I always saw her in, her legs very thin, the favored skater-style kicks with the pink laces on her feet. Her hair, long as always, her pride and joy, was pulled back into a ponytail at her neck. I’d just taken her for a mani/pedi, so her nails were shaped and painted.

I watched her pull inhalation after inhalation off that cigarette, a habit she’d never given up and who could blame her, really, right? You’re dying of brain cancer that you can’t fully treat because the chemo throws your HIV into full-blown AIDS? Yeah, have a smoke. What the fuck. At the same time, though, it was so typical of her, honestly, to cling to something so stupid given everything else she was dealing with. It made perfect sense if you knew her. I mean, she was the person who, when we first heard about her HIV diagnosis and rushed to see her, wanted only for us to take her to lunch then shopping for purple 100% cotton sheets. Or how, when the doctors told her to get her affairs in order and our other sister flew in to see her, they spent an entire afternoon on a mission to find her a Hello Kitty shower cap. That’s just how she was, how she dealt with it.

So when I heard her voice, for the first and only time, how afraid she was of what was coming, how much she felt like she had to hang on, I was at once devastated and also pleased that for once something honest was coming out of her mouth. I wanted to stay inside that moment with her, enlarge it to encompass the entirety of that afternoon, expand the bubble to take in the cramped apartment that was by then pretty much the full extent of her range, push it out as big as possible. I wanted so much for that admission to be the beginning of a way of confronting her death that I could understand, one that had room for the truth in it, and room for me and my family. Totally selfish, I admit it, but I craved some connection with her, some peace with her before she died, after years of a strange estrangement.

I listened and watched her shaking hand with its perfect glossy nails lift the cigarette to her lips repeatedly. In the shrub next to her, bees buzzed. A crow called out overhead. The winter sun was warm. I kept as still as possible, savoring this rare moment of sisterly closeness.

Her cigarette smoked down to the filter, she asked me would I please fetch the ziplock bag from the bed of her husband’s truck, parked there at one side of the driveway. I grabbed it, this gross bag filled with smoked-down cigarettes, the place she and her husband put them after they’d had their clandestine smokes out of sight of their daughter. She dropped the butt in and I sealed the bag back up, tucking it back by the wheel-well where I’d found it in the first place.

Meanwhile, she got to her feet, pushed the seat of the walker up, released the brake, and turned for the house. And started up her more-usual chatter. That precious, honest moment between us lasted only as long as that cigarette, as if that smoke had paradoxically lifted the haze that generally separated us, the barrier that was always there, holding me out of her life, at a distance that she deemed safe

She never again mentioned her own fear, at least not to me. A few weeks later, a last clandestine smoke sent her into a seizure from which she never recovered. She could still speak, but she repeated herself, was less lucid, was one foot out already. The last time I saw her, she was propped up in her bed wearing a favorite shirt that read, “Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite,” a small television set across the room playing a recorded Catholic mass in a loop. Her husband carried her out to the couch where she sat with me, head on my shoulder, held my hand, and whispered that she loved me. I squeezed  and whispered my love back to her, her fingers so thin in mine that her wedding rings spun. That day her grip was already less fierce. Soon, she was gone.

Standing at her grave with my parents, arranging flowers that she loved, I am happy at least for that – that my sister is released from fear and pain. And if things went her way, then she’s up in heaven somewhere, her long hair shining in the celestial light, kicking the angels’ asses at Scrabble and making sure they know it.

Rest in peace, little sister.

XX