She died because of fear

LIFESTYLE

By REBECCA KUKU
IT HAS been two years since my little sister, Emily, died from a failed abortion attempt. She was only 19, so young and so full of life.
There are four of us in the family, three boys and one girl. I am the oldest and Emily was the baby of the family and the only girl. We loved her, cherished her, and maybe we just may have been a little bit over protective of her.
That year, 2017, was a good year for us. I had recently gotten married and just when I came back from my three weeks honeymoon, I was promoted to a senior executive position in the company I was working for. The twin boys after me, who are both doctors had recently graduated and were accepted to work for a private company and our baby sister was just accepted into university. I remember coming come, and feeling that joyous feeling of pride and happiness upon hearing all the good news from my younger siblings. I remember at that time thinking, mum and dad would be so proud of us as they both had died a few years back in a car accident.
We dropped Emily at the university, she was so excited, and it would be the first time for her away from home and away from her over protective big brothers.
She waved us goodbye and we promised that we would visit every weekend.
Not her usual self
Months came and went, soon it was nearing the end of the second semester and we all had already planned to spend the Christmas holidays at our father’s village. The tickets were already paid for, I remember calling her to say we got the tickets already but she wasn’t her usual self; she didn’t sound excited and I asked her if she was sick and Emily said she was fine. She told me she loved me and that she was thankful for having me and the twins in her life. I thought it just her telling me that she missed us.
A couple of hours later, I got a phone call from her friends in school that Emily was rushed to emergency at the local hospital. I rushed there, thinking she was sick, I remembered our phone conversation and I thought to myself no wonder her voice sounded different.
When I got there, there was blood everywhere, she was covered in blood. I was confused, I screamed at the doctor to tell me what was wrong with her. That was when it hit me, her friends were crying, why were they crying? But the doctor, he said he was sorry, that she had lost a lot of blood and had died on the way to the hospital.
You know, there’s a word to describe a woman who loses her husband or a husband who loses his wife. A child who loses his or her parents but just like there’s no word to describe a parent who loses their child, there is no word to describe someone who loses their siblings. I lost my parents, but that day, losing my sibling, the pain was just hard to explain.
I remember seeing black, my wife was crying and pulling me but I kept screaming at the doctor, I can’t even remember what I was screaming to the doctor, I just remember screaming at him.
My wife must have called the twins and must have sorted the papers out, I remember reading that the cause of death was loss of blood from a failed abortion.
And I just held on to Emily’s body as my wife drove us back to the house. The twins arrived that same afternoon, we held her for a night but the next day we had to go back and leave her at the funeral home, and I can tell you that one of the hardest things that you do in life, is leaving your younger sibling’s dead body in a funeral home and walking away.
Why didn’t she tell us?
I kept thinking why? Why didn’t she tell us? God, I would do anything to have Emily alive and well. I would have raised the child as my own, or even supported her if she wanted to keep that baby and raise it as a single mum. And then, anger grabbed me in its fierce hand. I went back to the haus krai and demanded her friends to tell me who the father of her child was. And to my surprise he was there, with his family. He was crying but I was too pissed off to care, I grabbed him but my wife and the boy’s father intervened and told me to cool down first. I thought Emily had done the abortion because he had rejected her but I was surprised when he said he was willing to marry Emily and that he loved her. That he even told his parents already that they were expecting a baby.
And I just felt lost, I asked him to tell me why then would Emily try to abort her baby if she knew he loved her and was ready to take responsibility of the child they had created. And I’ll never forget his words. He said, “she was scared of you. She was so scared of you.”
That there was so many times she pleaded with him to have the abortion and despite him telling her that he would brave it and tell me himself in person, Emily was so scared and went ahead with the abortion without informing anyone.
All the anger in me just swept away and I just sat there thinking to myself, asking myself why she was so afraid of me, she wasn’t supposed to be afraid of me. Yes, I would have been pissed but I would have stood by her side and supported her.
That Christmas, we did go home for the holidays, except Emily was in a coffin. We buried her next to Mama and Papa, our only sister, our baby sister.
There are many cases of young women who have lost their lives through failed abortions, many did it because the father of the baby denied the child or refused to take responsibility.
But some, like my sister Emily, did it because they were afraid of their family.
No, Im not saying sex before marriage is good. Papua New Guinea is a Christian country, and sex comes after marriage. But times are changing and our young ones are more sexually active now at a young age.
I regret that I failed to make Emily feel and understand that no matter what she did, the mistakes or the wrongs, that I would still love her.
So I’m sharing my story now, in her memory, to help other siblings to not make the same mistake we did. We were her brothers and we loved her. Yes, we would have been pissed had she come home and told us that she was pregnant.
I would have beaten her boyfriend up. But we would still love her and support her and stand by her.