Farewell to a big sister who gave love, help and prayers

Her name was Emily.

She lived in a modest, wood-framed house on the corner of East Oakland’s 94th Avenue and B Street, purchased in 1945 when her husband, Eddie, came marching home from the Second World War.

They paid $7,000 for it, and added a recreation room sometime in the ‘60s, where we had some of the greatest holiday gatherings I can remember. We drank, we sang, we feasted, and we bellowed with youth and life. Only on Christmas Eve did we slow down to observe the tranquil nature of the season.

Then Eddie died and that took a lot of steam out of Emily. She’d been looking forward to their 60th wedding anniversary when he collapsed on the bathroom floor, standing before a mirror shaving. We wondered if he had witnessed his own death in the reflected image, fading and then falling away, like the silent crash of a tree in an empty forest. I still wonder.

Emily began turning inward. She was all right for a while, the same independent, outspoken, sometimes cranky big sister of my youth, caring about me as much as anyone ever has. But one could sense the transition from a strong, outgoing person to a lonely widow wrapped in a shroud of grief. Life without Eddie was empty.

As years passed, the neighborhood changed around her. Once mostly Portuguese and Italian, it became a haven for African Americans, and then Latinos. They all knew Emily, the old lady living alone in the house at the corner. They all looked out for her.

Her daughter and two sons tried to get her to move to a safer area, but she never felt unsafe where she was, and stubbornly declined. It was Eddie’s house. She wouldn’t leave the dreams and the memories that filled its every corner.

Eventually, her heart began to falter, and then her legs gave out from excessive weight and just plain lack of use. She rarely left the house, parking herself on a couch and watching television all day and eating the wrong kinds of food. Alone and fragile, she waited out the last clock-ticks of her fading life thinking of Eddie.

We were traveling in India when I learned of her death. It was both stunning and cataclysmic. My daughter Cindy e-mailed me, “I am really sorry to interfere with your vacation this way, but I thought it would be worse to find out after the fact when you got home. Emily died sometime on Sunday, Dec. 2nd, apparently from a heart attack.” I’m not saying that certain events in one’s life are often accompanied by the clashing chords of operatic music, but there was a lightning storm of unparalleled drama over the Indian town of Kochi the night I got the news. Lightning flashed around the hotel, thunder roared like cannon fire; rain fell with monsoon-like intensity.

My big sister was gone. The one who climbed trees to rescue me when I was a rambunctious kid. The one who took me in when I left home in high school. The one who gave me money when I entered college. The one who came to the train station when I went off to war. The one who never stopped praying for me when I moved to L.A.

Her daughter found her on the floor of her bedroom, one arm extended as though she had died reaching for something, or maybe someone. Make of that what you will.

The storm that had swept over Kochi was gone as quickly as it had appeared, a raucous, muscular stride through the black Asian night, leaving an unsettled silence in its wake. I sat on the edge of the bed looking out the hotel window as the storm whispered off, while Cinelli, always at my side, talked about Emily and what she’d meant to me and to our family. The time difference between India and the U.S. made it impossible to call; e-mail lacked the passion to convey my sadness. So I tossed through a sleepless night with Emily moving through my subconscious.

They’re clearing out the house on 94th Avenue now. Soon it will be on the market, sweeping away the last physical remains of an old lady who lived in her dreams, with little need for intrusion from the outside world. One can only hope that she found the heaven she was seeking and the husband she loved for all those years.

If I were the spooky type, I would say she was saying goodbye to me across the oceans through a linkage of thunder and lightning that lit the night.

I’ll say my farewell this Christmas Eve in a quieter place in this quiet way, hoping it will reach up through the starry nights and the glowing days to assure her that all is well with me.

So long, Big Sister. I’ll miss you.

Almtz13@aol.com