Carol

My sister, Carol, passed away on the eighteenth of August. It was not unexpected. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago, a vicious disease that carries an inevitable death sentence. Carol was five years older than me. She would have been seventy this Christmas. I don’t wish to dwell on her death, nor do I wish to recount all the details of her life. Like everyone else who comes into this world, it was filled with both joy and sorrow—good times and bad. Let’s keep that story secret shall we, hidden within the memories of those who knew and loved her. I want to speak to you of her spirit and what she meant to me.

There were four children in the Teves household; six people living in a small home with one bathroom in San Leandro. My brother, Danny, is the oldest child, ten years older than me. My sister Susan, eight years my senior, was three years older than Carol. I grew up with the disadvantage of being the baby of the family. There were things going on in my family that I was blissfully unaware of. By the time I became cognizant of our family dynamic, Carol was already into the double digits, a girl blossoming into a young woman….

Ten days before she died I went to see her. She was in bed and was deteriorating so rapidly it shook me to my core. I sat beside her, held her hand, now so fragile in mine, and wept. Carol and I had discussed the possibility of an afterlife. She didn’t think there was one; I wasn’t so sure. Through my tears I said to her, “Carol, if there's a place we go to when we die, I swear I will find you.”

Carol was uncommonly beautiful, a fact that was mostly lost on me as her little brother. She was, after all, my sister, and I didn’t see her as anything special. It wasn’t until years later when I saw a photo of her as a young woman that I had my “oh my God!” moment. Carol was, as we used to say back in the day, a fox. She had silky black hair and green eyes, the only member of our Portuguese family who didn’t have brown. Her green-eyed genes heralded back to the Azores, the islands of our ancestors. When you looked into them, you saw both beauty and a hint of the past.

My dad used to call her firecracker, a reference to her fiery personality. She had her opinions, and even as a little girl, she made her thoughts (and demands) quite clear. She was on occasion frustrating and hard to handle. I have fractured memories of verbal battles she conducted with our parents with regularity. She married her first husband, Ron Roach, and was out of the house when I was only fourteen, not enough years to be with her in the same home in my book. I used to have these crazy dreams that she left her husband and returned to me. But that never happened.

Of all my siblings, I was the closest to her. We had the same outlook on life, a complicated brew of irony, practicality and sarcasm. We both loved to read Stephen King novels and would talk endlessly about the latest one on the phone. The two of us always loved a good horror story. I will never read another one of his novels without thinking of her.

Carol was famous for her Christmas Eve celebrations. It was always at her home and was the closest thing we Teves’ had to family tradition. When she moved, the gatherings moved with her. I will always miss those winter evenings together that spanned so many years. The Teves and Roach families were together as one. Our children were young and life still had possibilities.

After Ron passed away, Carol was introduced to a man named Dave Victorino. Dave is a big guy, and the first time I met him I suspected he might be a gangster, but he was the furthest thing from that, our dear Dave. I had the surprise of my life when he asked me, the youngest brother, for my sister’s hand in marriage. I said yes, and he never gave me any reason to regret that answer. Their marriage was all too brief for two people so much in love. Dave cared for her with devotion and amazing grace until the very end….

Five days before Carol passed I went to see her again. This time I was prepared for the sight, and I did not weep. Instead I sat with her and talked for two solid hours about anything I could think of. Carol really couldn’t speak, but she could understand me. I once again told her we would try to meet again on the other side. Her eyes briefly opened and she said, “In Poipu”, the location of our home on Kauai, the island of our birth.…

When Carol was a little girl she couldn’t pronounce her name. Carol came out as Kakki. That became her nickname throughout her childhood and beyond. I remember calling her that when I was young. The beginning of her email address was KakkiCarol. So I leave this post with these words: I love you Kakki, Carol, my beloved sister, and I promise I will see you again.