why i did not die at age 14

i wrote this several years ago. my parents came across a copy and i think they felt bad. but i couldn't take it back anymore. anyways, here it is, since i'm on the subject of deaths in the family anyway.


WHY I DID NOT DIE AT AGE 14

I was supposed to die at the age of 14. 14 years and 6 months, to be exact. Since it is the year 2001, and here I am writing about it, apparently I did not die. No, I was not to be executed, nor was I ill with some life threatening disease. I simply concluded that I was going to die on that day. Why? Because my brother died at 14.

My brother’s name was Joselito. He was a full 12 years older than I am and for as long as I could remember I have heard people remarking on how uncanny the resemblance between us is. The same eyes, the same nose, the same lips…. Perhaps the only real difference was that he was male and I, female. I think we even had the same texture hair. As I grew older the resemblance became more pronounced. People started calling me “Joselita.” It didn’t bother me, of course. My brother was absolutely gorgeous.

When my brother died at age 14, people began to look at me as if I were a living testament to my brother. The remarks on our resemblance were still there, tailgated by “sayang…” Still, it didn’t bother me.

It didn’t bother me but it affected me greatly. Just how much I did not know until I turned 14.

See, my brother died 14 years and 6 months to the day of his birth. April 30, 1963. He died on October 30, 1977. Now why am I talking about the day he died? For the reason that I always thought that because I was so much like him, I would die in the same manner and under the same circumstances. I never really found out what he died of. I still don’t know and I don’t think it matters anymore. “Cardiac arrest” without the underlying causes is sufficient. All I knew was that I would die 14 years and 6 months to the day of my birth. Um… that would be January 14, 1989.

The fact that I didn’t know how my brother died didn’t matter one bit. I knew I was going to die. It didn’t matter how. I was just going to. It was a foregone conclusion. After all, I was my brother’s sister, his replica. Didn’t people keep reminding me? Of course I was going to share the same fate.

So imagine my disappointment when January 14 came and went without incident. Midnight came and there I was. Alive. Painfully alive.

Painfully? One would have thought I’d be oh-so-happy to be alive the next day. But I wasn’t. Insecurity set in. I was no stranger to the saying that “only the good die young.” Therefore I was going to die young. My brother died young. I was like him. I looked like him. Therefore I was going to die young. To my young mind it was the most logical thing in the world. So if I did not die, then the inevitable conclusion (again, to my confused mind) was that I was not good enough to die young. Fairly twisted? Maybe. But at the time that was the direction that my thoughts were following.

Questions plagued me. What did I do wrong? What did he do right for the Big Guy up there to want him for company so early? Maybe I was bad. Was I bad? What made me bad? And so on, and so forth. Questions I could not answer.

Life went on, however. And as I grew older, bits and pieces came together and I was able to make some sense of what I thought had happened or did not happen. There were still no answers to the questions I had asked at age 14. I just realized that I was asking the wrong questions. Actually I had come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t have been asking questions at all. Or perhaps one question was worth asking. Why didn’t I die at age 14? And the answer came with such enlightenment that I was surprised there were no sunbeams and singing angels.

I did not die at age 14 because I was not my brother. Nor was I a mere shadow of what or who he was. I am not Joselito, not Joselita. I was Tina B. (I still am.) A person in my own right, with a different path to follow, a different life to lead. I was who I am, not who people thought I looked like or who people thought I was like, or who they thought I should be.

I knew my brother was a great guy. Everyone said so. And what little memory I had of him corroborated those statements. But then, with all due respect to all who remarked that I was so much like my brother, I think they should have kept the comments to a bare minimum, if not kept them completely to themselves. At such an impressionable young age (since age 2) I was under the impression that because I looked so much like my brother, I was here to take my brother’s place (for a while at least) or to serve as a monument to his memory.

I am sure, with the growing wisdom of years, that they never intended for me to start thinking that way. After all, how were they to know that I was probably turning out to be a precocious child (read: weird) and would take their comments to heart? But intentions aside, and I know I am not alone in this, I think people should be careful with comments they make to and around children. It affects their lives greatly, for good or ill and for the latter, sometimes the effects only become apparent when it might be too late to rectify whatever damage has been done.

It took me years but eventually, I got over the notion that I was not good enough to die young like my brother. That I was meant to be his replacement. He was meant for other things, and so am I. What things? I’ve yet to find out. As a friend recently pointed out, I am still young.

So here I am. Ages older, wiser and awful glad that I did not die at age 14.