Past tense: Losing three brothers in three years | Health

I was the last of seven brothers born during the fall of Laos. Bombs fell from the sky. The earth was crushed under our feet. The sound of battle was heard from the lowest valleys to the highest mountains. We survived because of each other.

Across the Mekong River, with the current famine of an ash house, we were caring for our families living slowly and with memories of unity, our shared vision of a united future on the other side of the world.

We dreamed of a time when our sons and daughters would come out of the depths of despair. We had learned that houses built of sticks and stone will collapse in an unstable world. We all tried to raise our children in shelters instead of in despair.

In America, for a bright moment, it seems that our brothers’ dreams are coming true. In the United States, we raised small families until older children started their own. In America, our children, divorced from past tragedies, fed themselves on modern history and events. Time faded.

How would any of us know what the world would be like when the light of loss is lit up?

My fourth brother died earlier. His kidneys failed him. She was put on dialysis. He waited for the kidneys to come. Seven years swam. Then, one day he collapsed. He could not get up. There was no action at the hospital. Quickly, the wind had risen. We waved goodbye in various directions.

My older brother died again. Like our third brother, his kidneys had failed. He was on dialysis. She was in the arms of her eldest son. One day the child noticed that one of his eyes was red and angry. She took her father to the doctor. The doctor sent the officer to the hospital. At the hospital, a small thing led to another. The imbalance grew until the equation became stable and things got worse. In the end, there were many forms of life support. Toward the end, the wind was blowing fast and furious. We held on for as long as he could.

Then my third brother died. He died of a global epidemic. She died last December. When he called me, he said, “It’s just a cough. Do not be nervous. The problem is, I’ve stopped eating. ”

I told her, “The body is sick. The body can be healthy again. ”

He said, “I am older than our fathers.

I said, “This may not be the end of your story.”

I trust.

He looked embarrassed with my tears. Her little brother who always was in so much pain. This poet of a brother whose tears were very near, whose heart could not hold back his grief. I cleared my throat but could not get rid of my fears.

When my third brother died, something changed for the better.

My first brother told me how he lost both of his friends. Perhaps his time had come. A new loneliness had invaded his country and without his weight, he stumbled to seek a foothold in a world where no unity could be found.

My fifth brother, who was stricken with the virus worldwide, had difficulty breathing as a result of his travel and medical care. When she appeared her hair was black and white. In another song, his image stopped when the news of the third brother’s death reached him, his hands reaching for his heart. Realizing that they did not understand the story, she paused and said: “We are a family, not because we all survive. We are a family because of the continued love for one another in the future. ”

My sixth brother, trembling at the edge of the abyss, covered his pain in many areas of life that will still exist.

And me? I stand unprotected for the first time in my life with large numbers of my relatives. The air is cooler than ever. There are many clouds waiting to cry. The world I stand for has swallowed up the beloved bodies of my three elders and I know it will open for all of us soon. The question I face is not how I will survive in this world without my relatives, but how I have lived. The reason I can no longer sleep through the night is not because of the unspoken things between my siblings and me, but because of the things I want to leave my children with when the love of my older brothers pulls me forward to that place. unknown, the land of our ancestors, this fictional land of the Hmong people.

Inside, there is a fire. It grows because it now lives in a place where I used to keep my siblings in my heart. His flames licked my throat, burning the words I wanted to enter the world as cool, calm, and collected. There is a change going on inside of me, a twisted clock that could slip in if I couldn’t have the courage to break the world with my pain.

Our relationship has been dissolved. Not by storms. Loss of land. Problems of poverty. The dangers of being a stranger to an old place. But because of illness and disease. I have nothing to do with all of this. I have been idle in my life among my relatives, I cannot protect them from anything, unable to heal what their departure will break within their children. Our united dream is over.

What happens to a person when he learns to stand at the end of a long leaning life? What happens to a person when they are pushed and dragged in different directions, disrupted by blood-bone bonds? He becomes a shadow of his old personality, moving and directing the sun. He is remembered in the past even when he walks in these days, not sure of the great presence and that which is to come. He is a record for himself, humbly counting on the old life, last year, a plague that never came to an end.

Bee Yang, a Hmong refugee and an American citizen, as told by his daughter, Kao Kalia Yang.