Say Goodbye to my third sister-in-law. . .

We didn't know that
my third sister-in-law had been moved to a hospice ward with terminal colon cancer until we received a message saying that she wanted to see my husband, her younger brother.

It was completely unexpected news.

Even at our family gathering late last year, she only seemed a little low on energy and showed no particularly alarming symptoms.

Among the eight siblings in my husband’s family, she is the fourth, and it now seems she may be the first to leave this world.

At seventy-seven, it still feels far too soon.
She is a gentle, sincere, and deeply conscientious person who has lived a truly exemplary life.

Personally, among all eight siblings in my husband’s family, she was the one whose personality felt most similar to mine, so I always felt especially close and fond of her.
That makes this all the more heartbreaking and bittersweet.

Until now, I had vaguely assumed that we would continue exchanging news and keeping in touch for at least another ten years or so.

Yet one comforting thing amid the sadness is that her beloved son, who is a doctor, has even taken leave from work to stay by her side during these last months. In a way, it feels like a quiet reward for a life lived with such kindness, integrity, and devotion.

Now that the moment has come for my husband and his siblings to say goodbye for the first time to one of their own, I can sense his heart growing hurried and unsettled.

It suddenly makes us feel that perhaps the time has finally come for us, too, to begin preparing ourselves for our own eventual departure from this life.

She is the kind of person whom people will remember after she is gone and say, “She was truly a good person.”