My defiant sister

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I guess one could say my relationship with my sister is complicated. No doubt she would agree if she could speak. She’s been in a coma for more than four-and-a-half years, so she can’t do much of anything except open and close her eyes. Those eyes are still a startlingly beautiful blue color, tinted by a hint of violet. Someone once said of my sister, “Eleanor has eyes like Liz Taylor” (My sister’s name is Eleanor like my mother, whom she battled with most of her life). I wonder, now, what those eyes see and what she is thinking. The doctors tell me there is no sign of brainwave activity, but is it possible in some metaphysical way that she is defying science?

It seems as if defiance has always been a big part of my sister’s life. Defying her parents, much to their chagrin. Even defying death. After all, she has been rushed from the nursing home to the hospital numerous times since she suffered an attack of congestive heart failure in 2012 and survived every last one of them. Been on a ventilator and taken off. Somehow found a way to breathe on her own. The last time this happened, the doctor called me and counseled that maybe it was time to place my sister in hospice care. “The efforts to resuscitate her might be causing her pain,” she said. At least that’s what her grimaces told the medical professionals.

Heretofore, in the absence of a living will, I had always deferred to keeping Eleanor alive until she herself decided it was time to pass. But during that time, I had always been assured she was being kept comfortable. The end of life can sometimes turn grotesque. I didn’t think Eleanor would want that, so I reluctantly agreed to place her in a hospice.

My sister is five years younger than I. She was the apple of my father’s eye. To say that Dad overprotected my sister is like saying the Sixers haven’t won in awhile. He took her to and from work so she wouldn’t have to ride public transit like many working people. He paid her medical insurance while she was single and still living in our household, and later in life purchased a home in Wildwood for her when he was much too old to carry a mortgage. It was understandable, I guess, that, my mother resented all the attention, especially the financial help he showered on Eleanor from their moderate income.

After Dad passed, Mom found receipts showing his additional financial help had continued without her knowledge. Even though he was gone, Mom argued with him in her dreams about it. Dad even faced down a notorious mob figure because the mobster’s son had been bullying his grandson. It became the stuff of which family legends are made. When she was around five years old, Eleanor slugged me over the head with one of those wooden pull toys. When I complained, my father said, “You’re five years older than your sister.” End of discussion.

You had to look hard to find a time when Eleanor’s life wasn’t troubled, but I found an old photograph from just such a time. My sister was a child of the rock ‘n’ roll era when Elvis mania was beginning to take hold and Philadelphia gave birth to Chubby Checker and The Twist and all those doo-wop groups. She received a 45 RPM record player one Christmas. She had quite a collection and played them all every day at the volume one can only call “loud.” For a brief time during her high school years, Eleanor even dated South Philly’s own Bobby Rydell. For my sister, the Fifties were her glory days.

About that photograph of her I once found…

It is black and white, so one really can’t see the blue-violet of her eyes or her blonde hair (like her mother’s). But even in the black and white photo, it is apparent those eyes were something special. She is sitting on the stairway in our house on Fifth Street near Jackson. Her hair is tied in a ponytail, and though she is sitting sideways, her face is turned toward the camera. Her jeans are rolled up in the style of the times. And she is smiling this beautiful smile. The smile seems at first glance secure in the knowledge that she is something special living in special times. But if you look more closely, you can discern the hint of insecurity, the knowledge that this special time will not last. Her future would be mostly one of strife and poor health.

My wife and I, along with Jerry, the love of the last part of her life, were in the room at the hospice when they removed the ventilator and tubes from Eleanor. The attending doctor leaned over to me and whispered that my sister would likely last only a couple of minutes, at most an hour. That was five days ago.

My sister is still breathing in defiance of the odds. She is being kept comfortable. Jerry by her side. She will pass away on her own schedule, at a time of her choosing.

Sometimes you just have to admire defiance. ■

Editor’s Note — Eleanor passed away June 25th, four days after the composition of this column.