Caring for My Sister Broke Me — and Taught Me
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lost my older sister in 2023 to stage 4 breast cancer. The very next day, my grandmother passed away too.
People say “grief comes in waves,” but this felt more like I got hit by a storm I never walked away from. I still get sad. I still have moments where it all hits me again out of nowhere. Yes, I have a therapist. Yes, I’m “functioning.” But the way everything happened? It changed me.
This is not a perfect grief story. It’s the real one.
⭐ Before the Diagnosis: Our Relationship Wasn’t Perfect, But She Was My Sister
Me and my sister didn’t have some fairytale relationship. I love my sister, but we had problems like any family does — maybe worse than most.
I lived with her around 2019. We had good moments: watching movies, cooking, doing everyday life together. But there was drama, tension, and things that happened that made me stop talking to her for about a year. I was protecting my peace. I was dealing with my own trauma and messy family dynamics, and at that time, distance felt like survival.
So when I talk about grief, it’s not just “I miss her.” It’s “I miss her” and “we didn’t get to fix everything” and “I did what I had to do to stay sane.” All of that can be true at the same time.
⭐ Medical Neglect: She Was a Black Woman They Didn’t Take Seriously
My sister was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer around 2018. By the time they even took her seriously, it had already spread.
She was a Black woman in pain, and they treated her like she was exaggerating.
They thought she was “too young,” like cancer checks have an age minimum. They overlooked her symptoms. They dismissed her pain. They made her feel like a hypochondriac — until it was too late.
By the time they stopped playing with her life, it was stage 4.
I watched her go from looking healthy, full, and strong to losing weight fast. Her sciatic nerve, her bones — everything hurt. She was on heavy meds like oxy just to exist in her body.
⭐ Becoming Her Caregiver While I Was Struggling Myself
At one point I became her home health aide. I knew exactly what was going on with her day to day. I helped with her medication, helped her get around, helped take care of my nephew.
At the same time, I didn’t have a stable place to live. I was basically staying there until I could get into a shelter. I was taking care of her while trying to keep myself from falling apart.
There were nights she stopped taking her meds and stayed up all night. I was up with her. I’d be up until 3 or 4 AM, then wake up around 6 to get my nephew ready for school because she physically couldn’t.
She’d rub my back in the middle of the night while I sat there exhausted, and I remember thinking, I feel sick. I feel drained. I don’t even have time to take care of myself. It was too much. My body and mind could not keep going like that.
So I made the hardest decision: I left. I still loved her. I still cared. But I was burning out to the point where I felt like I was disappearing.
⭐ “I Don’t Want This to Be the Last Time You See Me”
Eventually she moved to Connecticut. I ended up in a shelter there too. Life was scattered, unstable, heavy. After some time, I went back to New York.
One day, my sister called me from Connecticut and said, “Can you please come? I really don’t feel like myself.”
I went.
When I saw her, she looked at me and said the sentence that still echoes in my chest:
“I don’t want this to be the last time you see me.”
I asked, “What do you mean?”
She told me she was going to the hospital. And this is important because she didn’t believe in hospitals. She hated them. For her to say, “I’m going in,” I knew the pain was beyond anything I could imagine.
We went. In the hospital she kept asking, “Is my sister with me? Is my sister with me?”
They gave her some medication — something they weren’t supposed to give her — and she knocked out. Hours passed. I fell asleep in the waiting room.
Her boyfriend came running to me: “Hurry up, hurry up. Your sister, she don’t look too well. I don’t want her to pass away or something.”
I ran to the back. Her heart had stopped. Doctors were all around her, pushing on her chest, trying to bring her back.
⭐ ICU, Family, and Chaos
They moved her to ICU. My mom, my brothers, my cousin — everybody started coming to the hospital. We were there for days. Sleeping in chairs. Living on vending machines and worry.
Her heart stopped more than once. They put her on a breathing machine. She couldn’t talk, so she wrote in a notebook.
And even in all that, there was still family drama. My mom brought her boyfriend — a man none of us knew — into that hospital room during one of the most sensitive moments of our lives.
My sister literally wrote in the notebook like, “Who is this in my space?” She didn’t approve. It felt like my mom was doing whatever she wanted while my sister was too sick to fully speak up. That moment still sits wrong with me. It felt disrespectful and selfish.
⭐ The Moment She Passed
At some point I had to leave briefly. Life was still happening around all of this. Her boyfriend and my brother were there. I came back to the hospital, walked in, and she looked the same — still, quiet, machines around her.
Within minutes of me being there, all her vitals dropped.
Nurses and doctors started rushing in, pushing on her chest again, calling out numbers, counting seconds.
The doctor looked me in my eyes with this sad, heavy look and I just knew. That was it.
My sister passed away right in front of me.
My brothers were on FaceTime, my mom was gone to get my other brother from the airport. When they came back and saw it for themselves, it was like the whole air in the room shattered. My nephew lost his mom. We lost my sister. The energy was heavy, screaming, crying, shock, disbelief.
And then the next day, around almost the same time, we got the news: my grandmother had passed too.
Back-to-back. My sister and my grandmother. Gone.
⭐ Grieving in a Toxic Family System
That alone is enough to break a person — but grief didn’t happen in a calm, supportive family.
It happened in a toxic one.
There was drama around money, entitlement, who “deserved” what, who was “owed” something. People were selfish, loud, intrusive. There were moments I couldn’t even fully cry because someone else’s chaos or ego was louder than my pain.
That’s something nobody talks about:
Grief hits different when your family is too toxic to let you grieve in peace.
I felt sad. Angry. Numb. Guilty. Overwhelmed. Triggered. There were times I just needed silence, and instead it was arguments, decisions, and people acting like they owned parts of my sister’s memory.
⭐ What I Learned About Grief (That Nobody Prepared Me For)
After everything, this is what I learned — not from a therapist, not from a book, but from living it:
- Grief is not linear. One day you’re okay, the next day a random smell, song, or picture ruins you.
- Grief has layers. You grieve the person, the version of them before they got sick, the memories, the future they’ll never see… and the version of you that existed before you lost them.
- You can love someone and still know you had to protect yourself. I stopped talking to my sister for a while to protect my peace. I still loved her. Both are true.
- Caregivers need care too. Being up all night, dealing with meds, sickness, pain, and your own life will drain your soul if you don’t get support.
- Toxic family can interrupt your healing. Sometimes you’re not just grieving the person — you’re grieving the family you wish you had around you while you grieve.
⭐ How I Cope Now (Even When It Still Hurts)
I’m not going to pretend I’ve “healed” and everything is fine. Grief doesn’t really go away. You just learn how to carry it.
These are some of the things that help me when it gets too heavy:
- Letting myself cry when it comes. Not always holding it in to be the strong one.
- Talking about them out loud. Remembering their creativity, their laugh, the good memories, not just the hospital scenes.
- Doing things with my hands. Writing, designing, creating — it helps my mind from spinning out.
- Therapy. Having at least one person who knows the whole story and doesn’t minimize it is everything.
- Giving myself permission to step back from family when I need to. Distance is sometimes the only way I can feel my own feelings.
And when something reminds me of them — a voice note, a picture, an old video — I let myself feel it. I don’t rush to “be okay” for everyone else anymore.
⭐ If You’re Grieving Too…
If you’ve lost someone and you’re trying to grieve while still dealing with family drama, money stress, mental health, or survival… I see you.
You’re not weak for still being affected. You’re not “stuck in the past.” You’re not dramatic for thinking it changed your whole life — because it did.
It’s okay if you’re still figuring out how to live in a world they’re not in anymore.
It’s okay if you miss them and feel angry at the same time.
It’s okay if grief comes in waves, years later.
You’re not failing at healing. You’re human.
And if all you did today was wake up, breathe, remember them, and keep going in your own way — that’s enough.