And so it goes...

I have two older brothers between me and my sister. My brothers are a couple years older than me but my sister was born seven years prior to my birth. They say when a sibling is born that far apart that the relationship is more like Aunt and Nephew as opposed to sister and brother. That was how it was between my sister and I. She would always stick up for me when my bratty brothers were picking on me and would defend me to the bitter end when we would fight.

Her I.Q. was two points above mine but still I had it all over her with knowing all the stupid, inconsequential things that guys enjoy knowing. I was never into sports so much, so my vast acquisitions were more to the leaning of TV and Science Fiction and Comics. Some times we would get into heated discussions on some minor point that she would insist she was right about, but, in the end, I would prove her wrong and she would steam for awhile until the next subject would arise.

I remember once she was sitting along side the dirt road we lived on in southern California, talking to a repairman who was fixing something on a telephone pole. It was very hot that day and before long she had succumbed to the heat and passed out. That scared me, thinking that something bad could happen to my only sister. I was 5 at the time.

She took after my dad who had a very stubborn streak and would back down from very little. When the two of them had gotten into a discussion, where each knew they were right, it very seldom ended well. They loved each other a great deal. She was very saddened when he died a few years back.

As the years passed my sister moved away to live with some friends in the Bay Area near San Francisco. She met a guy there and they soon were married. They had three great children and I had two neices and a nephew. My wife and I moved to the Bay Area with my parents and we were all back together again as even my brothers had moved there also.

It is a great place to live but since we moved here our health hasn't been too good. I acquirded diabetes and CHF (congestive heart failure) along with high blood pressure and I was diagnosed with a bad ticker resulting in double bypass surgery a few years back.

Not to be outdone, my sister also became diabetic. She too has high blood pressure and she had a blood clot in her leg on two different occasions. At one point she was admitted to the hospital where upon it was determined that the carotid artery on the left side of her neck was comepletely blocked. The doctors said that she would be alright as there are two, one on each side of the neck, and the other one would take over and she should be fine. She went home and I was admitted into the hospital that week for a nine-day stay with Cellulitis.

This is all kind of tough since our mother is 82 years old and runs circles aound us, literally. I can't understand how she can be in such good shape at that age.

So it appeared that my sister and I were in a race to see who would die first. Her with her clots and other goods or me with my bad ticker and both of us with HB and diabetes.

It's really unfortunate that today, at 4:45 pm after suffering a massive stroke, she won.



Marcus Tee