Happy Birthday, Alicia

Today is my sister Alicia's birthday. She passed away just over 5 years ago at age 42, so she would have been 47 today. I ate mexican food for dinner and played hours worth of cards (Solitaire) - all in memory of her. I gave her a tribute shout out a la Jabbawockeez when I sat down to do the aforementioned. I also told her I missed playing cards with her in a big way because now no one plays with me. (Unless Honey Bunny and I are camping, on vacation or really, really bored at home.)

Alicia and I used to play Rummy 500, Go Fish, Crazy 8's, War, 21 for hours while drinking Malibu Rum & Coke, and often deep into the night. The longer we played the more slap happy and drunk we got, and the verbally abusive teasing and air horn-like laughing got out of hand. At some point, we started wearing our mom's sun visors while we played, to look like old school poker dealers.

The card sessions were usually preceded by a large mexican dinner at Carlos O'Brien's (which is just not the same anymore since it left the Plaza, which also is just not the same anymore). We would always ogle a waiter or two. I went for the scruffy college intellectual types, while she went for anything tall with a bubble butt.

I was 9 when she moved out of the house, as she was 11 years older than me. We only had a couple years together at "home" as adults. She was rescued in 1991 by our parents from poverty and ill health, after her husband left her, from the house she was being evicted from in Texas. They brought her back to California to start a new life. My reign as the only child and sole resident of the three bedroom/one bathroom suite known as the upper level of our house came to an end. It was a little rough having Alicia back in my life daily, and having my space invaded.

And I'm not gonna lie... sometimes she was a social liability. Alicia could be funny, clever and affable, but she was also slightly developmentally delayed. She didn't always have a great sense of personal space, boundaries or social etiquette. Most people complained about her while simultaneously wanting to like her.

A couple years later, the night before I moved up to San Francisco, we had a raging party at our friend Bill's house. Alicia worked for Domino's Pizza and had an extremely hot coworker named Ben that I'd lusted after for months. She joined the party, Ben in tow, when their shift ended at 11pm. She asked Ben and I to come out to the back patio with her, turned to Ben and told him that I was moving to San Francisco and that he should kiss me goodbye, and then she turned and left us to be alone. Awkward. But, sweet, right?

The other thing she did, sober, was keep the party going until about 4am, at which point she turned to me and said, "I guess we ought to go since Dad wants us to leave at 6am for Frisco." As she drove us home and I sipped on my Coors Light, I said to her, "Dad is going to kill me... I've never stayed out all night that he knows about, and I stink like booze." She replied, "Don't you worry about Dad, I'll take care of it. Just go straight upstairs and shower and get ready to leave." I never knew what she told him but he didn't say anything to me. Of course, there wasn't much of a chance since I passed out in the back seat before we turned off our street and slept for the next seven hours. She did too, next to me in the back seat.

In 1994, I returned home for the summer to work as a flower delivery person. Alicia was still working at Domino's as a pizza delivery person. One afternoon I came home from my shift to my mom bustling nervously around the house, putting on her shoes and gathering her purse. I asked what was going on. She said, "Alicia's been in an accident of some sort... I guess she's having problems seeing out of one eye... we have to go to the hospital." I told her to not be so nervous, we would go meet Alicia at the hospital and see what was going on. To this day, I don't know if she knew exactly what was going on and was protecting me from a freak out, or if the hospital hadn't fully explained what happened.

What happened was a broken sternum, four broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and knee, and complete loss of not just vision, but of her entire right eye. She'd fallen asleep at the wheel on her way to work, and the car veered off to hit a concrete street lamp, which then collapsed on the car. When the nurse met us at the door, she brought us immediately back into the emergency room, as Alicia was about to go into surgery. As we followed her brisk pace through the hall, the severity of the situation started to dawn on me. I wasn't prepared to see my sister laying on the table trying desperately to catch her breath, with blood running from her eye down into a pool on the table, crying, saying "I fucked up, I fucked up" over and over again. I will never forget our mom saying to her, "Alicia, don't say 'fuck' in public." I ran out of the room and to a pay phone to call our sister Amy. I was crying so hard I could only choke out "Alicia...", and then Amy started yelling at me to tell her what the hell had happened, panic rising in her voice. It was one of the most heartbreaking and scary moments of my life, at least to that point. Alicia went through a few surgeries to fix her eye, but ultimately it had to be removed and she wore a prosthetic eye from that point on. It took a very long time for her to recover physically from that accident and work again.

Flash forward to the summer of 2003. I was so happy to hear that she was moving to Las Vegas with her boyfriend and his children. By that point, she had lived with my parents for 10 years and about as many years had passed since the accident. She was ready to go live her own life on her own terms. Living with the children, each one of whom had special needs, was hard on her, though. Every time I talked to her, she sounded worn. Her boyfriend was a commercial truck driver and was on the road a lot of the time. The last time I talked to her was on the phone in early January, just after Christmas. They hadn't had the money to come to Riverside for Christmas, so I didn't see her like I normally did over the holidays. She asked me during that call if I thought Honey Bunny was "the one" and I said yes, even though we'd only been dating for four months. She told me her life was not as great as she thought it would be away from home. I noted that she sounded like she had a bad cold. She mentioned that she'd been sick with the flu for two weeks.

Again, I'm not going to lie. We were not close anymore. Our lives went in different directions over the 11 years I lived in San Francisco and she remained at home. Talking to her on the phone was difficult. She would often watch TV during conversations, and would get distracted and stop talking mid-sentence or I would realize mid-tangent that she wasn't actually listening to me. The only thing we really had in common was complaining about our parents... how nuts my mom is and how cold my dad could be. I regret it now, of course. Hindsight is always 20/20. If I'd known she was going to pass away midlife, I would have made a better effort to remain connected to her.

That January morning of 2004, I wore my black rattan slides to work because nothing else went with my outfit. They smelled badly and were particularly uncomfortable that morning. I remember walking into my office, stepping out of the slides and onto the carpet barefoot, sitting down and turning on my computer. It was one of the only days I was on time to work. I was engrossed in a spreadsheet when the phone rang. It was Amy, and she was crying. I said, "Oh no... did Gaia pass away?" Her cat had been sick. She said, "No. Alicia." I sat there for a moment trying to figure out what she meant. "WHAT?", I said. She choked out, "Alicia... she died this morning." She died from congestive heart failure.

If you've ever endured the loss of someone close to you, or from your close family, then you know exactly what I'm about to say. It's like the earth stops rotating. You question whether - and hope - you're in a dream. You become throbbing numb. You ask, "How did this happen?" because it truly seems beyond reality that you will no longer see this person (or pet), talk to her, for the rest of your life (or ever, depending on what you believe). It was unreal. My supervisor managed the situation, as she managed every situation at that time. She ordered my coworker (ex-crush/FB/BFF, Tim, ACK) to drive me home in my car, because she said I was in no condition to drive. I called Honey Bunny before I left the office. I also booked a flight to Riverside online before I left the office. I could have driven home just fine, if you ask me. I was still thinking clearly then. It would be about two weeks until the truly crushing and seemingly permanent numbness and grief set it.

Five years later, I feel like I'm managing my grief well. Alicia is alive and well in my memory without that memory being linked directly to heartbreak. When I meditate, sometimes she and Euglina make an appearance to say hi. I'm planning an Alicia tattoo for the opposite hip as Euglina's tattoo. Together they serve as inspiration and push me forward in life.