It is June 3, a day before my youngest sister's birthday. The last time we celebrated her special day was in 2017.

It has been tradition for the family - dad, mom, us three girls, and my sister's husband and three kids - to eat out whenever someone celebrated their birthday.

My sister had it all planned. She had gift certificates for a Chinese restaurant in Greenhills, San Juan, and we would have lunch there, along with my dad's only sister, who is unmarried.

It was a blistering hot day and there was only street parking available. That meant leaving our vehicles under the heat of the noon sun. We couldn't get out of the cars fast enough to run inside the restaurant and cool off.

Final celebration

Lunch would be a lauriat - around eight dishes ranging from appetizers of steamed shark's fin or pork siomai to soup, fried rice and entrees of lemon chicken, birthday noodles, beef with broccoli, to buchi for dessert.

We usually take at least two hours to clean up everything. It was cold inside the private room that was reserved for our group. Once the dishes start being served, it is non-stop eating, and chatting.

After lunch, we broke into two groups - one would head to the Greenhills tiangge to shop, the rest would head home. The aircon of the car left with the shoppers wasn't running well. (Remember, it had been sitting under the sun for at least 3 hours) And the celebrant was driving. Her companions would later remember how uncomfortable she seemed.

I am remembering this day because some three weeks later, my sister would suffer a massive stroke, and after three days would succumb.

Everybody's friend

There is a seven year age gap between my sister and I. But we still shared a room, since we were both not married and preferred to stay with our parents. My sister is my complete opposite. While I can stand not talking for long stretches of time, she can chat up a storm even when you're not listening.

It goes without saying that she had more friends than I. Making friends was always easy for her. She had lots of them - a group with much older folks, her high school best friends, priest friends or those from the seminary, friends from elementary and college and even friends of our parents!

A few years before, she already suffered an ischemic stroke. It affected her left leg so she was already walking with a limp. She was diabetic, hypertensive, and suffered from amenorrhea. Technically, she should be on maintenance medication. For a time she was until she wasn't.

So be it!

You can't help but think she had a death wish. My mom would always berate her about not caring about the food she ate as well as her being remiss in taking her meds.

When she and my mother would get into that argument, ("Mamaya bumulagta ka na lang," my mom would say) her usual reply would "eh di bumulagta!" My mom is basically saying my sister is setting herself up to die and she would say "so be it!"

The one thing my sister has made very clear not just to us, but to her closest friends as well, is that if anything happened to her, she was not to be revived. In short, DNR (Do Not Resuscitate).

To this day, I have to live with the traumatic memory of finding her sprawled on the bathroom floor, loudly snoring but not moving. Neither would she respond when I tapped her cheeks, shook her or called her name.

The bathroom sink was a mess with vomit, and the towel holder had been pulled out of the wall. From that I surmised she had grabbed it as she was about to collapse.

I ran for the sphygmomanometer and stethoscope and took her blood pressure. It was 200/150. I called one of her friends, a cardiologist, and asked for help. She instructed to give her catapres to lower the BP, but we had none.

Off to the ER

I went next door to alert my sister. Then we had to call the emergency hotline for an ambulance, which seemed to take forever to arrive. All this we did without waking our elderly parents. We only woke them when the ambulance was there because the red and blue lights were too bright not to notice. That way, they wouldn't panic and make it more difficult.

The EMT personnel were very efficient. They quickly loaded my sister onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. We would go to one of the nearest hospitals where her doctor best friend was affiliated with.

At the ER, the doctors and nurses transferred her to a gurney and started taking her vital stats. They would later tell me that her BP was 300. The pressure was so high that it caused her to throw up before she collapsed.

I didn't pick it up when I took her blood pressure because who would've thought it would ever spike that high.

They tore her night clothes, pajamas and underwear and dumped them in the disposable waste bin. That was like a dose of cold water on me as to her real condition. They needed a CT scan to determine how bad it was.

Waiting and decisions

It was the longest hour of my life waiting for the results. It was even more agonizing waiting to be transferred to the ICU and to speak to a neuro-surgeon. I did know it was massive, with almost two-thirds of her brain covered by clot.

The doctor only arrived to explain things to me around 8 AM in the morning. She collapsed a little after midnight. The prognosis was not good. Surgery, while it would help de-pressurize her brain, did not guarantee she would get better.

The pons, the largest part of her brainstem, had been damaged. If ever she survived surgery, my sister would be in a vegetative state, the one thing she never wanted. And the doctor was honest enough to say she didn't have long to live; a week, he said, was a miracle.

We made the painful decision to instruct DNR. Even with such order, I learned hospitals don't like this instruction. The ICU staff insisted on giving her medication each time one of her organs would fail. Finally, I put my foot down. Just use up all the meds already in her IV drip system. Then we wait.

Letting go

My family is of the belief that the living can hold back someone ready to die. They have this very strong sense. While we adults had conceded, the three kids couldn't yet fathom why my sister didn't want to fight to live.

Convincing them to let go was just as nerve-wracking as waiting for my sister's last breath. We'd shed buckets of tears even before she finally passed on.

The ICU visiting hours started at 6 PM. By the nurse's calculation, the meds would run out around 9 PM. We had taken turns going inside to see her. When it was my dad's turn, before he could go in, the nurse was rushing out distressed.

She had flatlined. And she didn't want anyone of us to witness her go.

It took me three years not to have panic attacks each time the day she collapsed would roll around. I would always remember the trauma of seeing her lying on the ground, like she was just asleep. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still thinking what if she'd survived.

But I knew my sister was ready to go home to her maker. She had prepared herself for it. And we had to respect that, and be proud of her for being so brave.

Photos: Unsplash