Malini, or Mali for short, would have been a healthy baby, but was being strangled by the umbilical cord when my mother went into labour. It was before the days of ultrasounds and today’s foetal monitoring. They left my mother in labour for almost 48 hours. By the time Mali was finally delivered, she had cerebral palsy from the lack of oxygen to her brain.
My parents were young and alone in Canada. They needed support to look after a child with a disability and took Mali to India to my grandparents. My father had to return to Canada to his job in September, but my mother stayed on. Eventually, she also returned to Canada but left Mali with her mother for a time, as is often the custom in India.
Somewhere in my parents’ story, I was born. My parents did not want to worry their parents so kept my mother’s pregnancy a secret. When I was born healthy, they sent an elated telegram to India: Healthy baby girl born, 7 pounds.
When I was six months old, my mother took me to India, and I was together with my sister for six months. How lucky was I! I don’t remember her, of course, but I have seen pictures of me and my sister together. Mali, the older sister, playing with her baby sister Mau.
Then my mother brought me back to Canada, leaving Mali with my grandparents again.
There was no telegram on December 18, but sometime later, my mother received an Aerogram letter. She opened it eagerly for news. My father was at work. She was alone with me. The letter said that Mail had died on December 18. She had had a bad cold which turned to pneumonia, and it was simply too much for her delicate lungs and heart.
I can’t imagine how my mother felt when she read that later. She told me that she called my father at work. She told me they got through the next few months just by looking at my face.
They never told any of their friends about Mali. They never sought help or took anti-depressants. They never talked about it. It wasn’t done in those days.
I was too little to be aware that I had lost my sister. I was too little to be aware of my parents’ grief. But as I was growing, and into my adulthood, and to this day, I was aware of a hole in my life and in my family that I knew was the absence of my sister. As a child, I talked to Mali a lot in my head. I told myself stories that we found out it had been a mistake. She was not dead at all. And we would be reunited and so happy as a family of four.
I craved a friend who could fill the emptiness left by Mali’s death. I craved a best friend. Friendship can be strong, even stronger than family sometimes. But it can also be fragile or out of reach or easily lost.
I had a best friend named Kathy from grades 3 to 7. She was the best friend of my dreams. She was the perfect best friend for me, shy and sweet and good. In grade 8, my family moved away for a year for a sabbatical, and when I returned in grade 9 everything had changed, and Kathy and I were no longer best friends.
In my heart, when I am loneliest, I still search for Mali. Perhaps, if she had lived, we would not even be close. But I don't believe that. I believe that so much could have been different if she had just lived.
It is a cliche but I believe that she does watch over me, and has helped me through the many things that have happened in the last few years, and before. The things that worked themselves out even when it seemed there was no way out.
And now. Sometimes I doubt and despair, but in the darkest of moments, I know that I am not alone, because even though Mali died, she did not leave me alone. I know that she is there, somewhere protecting her little sister, like in those pictures of the two of us on our grandmother's balcony.
I will buy some flowers today, her birthday, June 2. Happy Birthday, Dear Mali.
