Kor Family: Minus Two

  

It was about three years ago today when I got a call from my mom Anita, letting me know that my sister Ana was going in for surgery to remove fibroids from her uterus. It didn't sound like it was anything serious. She put my sister Ana on the phone, who sounded tired. I told her that I would call her tomorrow after the surgery and we said our goodbyes. 

The next morning, I received frantic calls from Anita, telling me that something had gone wrong with the surgery. While attempting to remove the fibroids, they found large advanced stage cancerous tumors that were non-treatable. She had also lost a ton of blood, which was a major problem due to her anemia. She had slipped into a coma and, after discussing it with an understandably hysterical Anita, decided to take her off life support. She would have only lived for a few more weeks, and there was no chance of her getting better. Anita, for some strange reason, took pictures of Ana's dead body, bleeding out on the hospital bed. The tumor was so big that she looked pregnant. My sister, it seemed, had neglected to take care of herself and waited too long to get help. 

 

 

You know, we were never really close... even less so as the years went by. She was sometimes very hard to talk to, due to her belief in religion, conspiracy theories, and generally troubled logic. She had a degree in accounting, but struggled to maintain a job due to her irrational way of thinking. I would sometimes avoid her calls because I knew there would be a chance the conversation would be about something she saw on social media that supports some conspiracy theory about whatever. Her last post on her Facebook was "Please God, don't let them take my uterus!" But none of that mattered anymore. Ana Kor was gone. The official cause? Malignant pelvic sarcoma, with hemorrhagic shock, coagulopathy, and acute blood loss anemia as contributing factors.

By the late afternoon, I was wondering how I was going to tell my father, Alan. He was old, blind, and being "taken care of" by his Nigerian church friends who alienated him from his family and stole well over 350K from his 401K. He and I were not on good terms, especially after he ridiculously accused me of stealing a TV I had bought for him and removed me as power of attorney. I called him and his live-in church friend Janie answered. I said that I need to speak to him because my sister had just died. Janie was in shock, not just because my sister was dead, but also because my father Alan had died that morning. The only word I could use to describe that moment was surreal. I just kind of accepted it because it was too crazy to make sense of. I still have no idea how he died. His death certificate just states that he was found dead in his home at 7:15 AM, so I assume it was natural causes.

The Preparation

I drove down to NYC to help Anita with the funeral arrangements. When her friends were around, she was somber but pleasant to be around. Once we were by ourselves, driving around for funeral preparations, she would be yelling at me, screaming about how I'm not married and my sister wasn't married and that's why she died. On and on with the yelling, but I held it together because I really wanted to kick the shit out of her. Even though her sadness was understandable, she had enough restraint to be civil for her friends, but then take it out on me, one who lost a sister and a father. 

 

 

She even took a call from one of my sister's friends who was about to do the same fibroid surgery. My mom prayed for her and told this complete stranger that she loved her like a daughter. The woman was amazed that someone who just lost a daughter cared about her so much, but I knew it was just her caring more about friends than family. And the kicker? When I wanted to speak at my sister's funeral, my mother said no because it would be embarrassing if I stuttered. Let me write that again. It would be embarrassing if I stuttered. That's what ended it for me. I no longer had sympathy for her and just wanted to get it over with.

The Funerals

Due to some Nigerian culture bullshit, my mother could not attend the funerals. My brother Alex, who was supposed to be flying in from Seattle, claimed that flights were canceled all over the country during that time. While that was true, I call bullshit. Offer him 5 million dollars to find a way to get to the funeral, and he would have found a way. But anyway, Ana's funeral had some of her old church friends and several of my mom's church friends. Ana looked so peaceful, as if she was just sleeping. The service was worse than I thought it would be. 

 

They had a camera connected to a big screen, and they continuously zoomed in on my face, likely expecting me to cry. I stayed stone-faced, completely full of disdain for everyone around me: from my sister's ghoulish church friends asking me if they can stream the service and take pictures of her body to my mom's church friends almost making fun of my expressionless face. The only person who showed any true care for my sister was her landlord, who was visibly shocked by the sight of my sister's body. Ana would sometimes babysit his daughter, so they knew each other well. I kept my stone face and transfixed my eyes on my sister's dead body for almost 90 minutes straight. Once it was over and everyone left, I asked the funeral guy to give me a minute alone and then cried like a baby for about 20 seconds. It felt so good to finally let it all out.

My father's funeral was much faster, but equally frustrating. I was surrounded by his church friends, which included Morona, the woman who stole 350K from his 401K and tried to sell his house thanks to him giving her power of attorney. The crooked pastor even asked if Morona would like to come up and say a few words. The worst part was seeing my father. He was buried in a cheap suit that my mom had to find from a thrift store because his church friends, who were all salivating at the thought of selling his house and reaping the almost 500K it was worth, refused to put money in for anything. After all was said and done, the great Alan Kor was gone, buried in a cheap suit and surrounded by vultures. So that's two family members in different states, under different conditions, both die on the same day. Crazy. 

 

 

Aftermath

 

 

My relationship with my mother was never the same after that. I keep her at arms length, and no longer feel bad about keeping literally everything from her. My relationship with my brother also changed, but for different reasons which I will explain in a later post. My curiosity with Nigerian culture also died. I've had pretty bad luck with them anyway, but now it's completely gone. I have no Nigerians around me, and will keep it that way.

 

Sometimes I do joy rides, from late at night until early the next morning. I get in my car and drive around Smalltown and neighboring villages for hours, playing music and singing songs (windows up, of course). It's my "fun time" that I've had since 2010. It also helps take the stress off of living and working in a town by myself for years. It's akin to when I was in college, taking long walks after classes at night in Manhattan's Village to clear my head and think about things. 

 

My joyrides are different now. I spend the first three or four hours having a good time, and then I drive to a parking lot on one of Smalltown's boulevards, park the car, play a certain playlist, and think about my father and sister. With songs like "Cold Little Heart" and "Brothers In Arms" playing, I pull up pictures of my father dancing and smiling, graduating from school with a full head of hair and his whole life ahead of him. I look at pictures of my sister and smile, remembering her unmistakable laugh and the times she would hold my hand at the end of a street corner and then lift me up to jump onto the street when I was a kid. Then I pull up pictures of their dead bodies and how it all ended. At first, I did it to get numb to, and accept, the tragic events of that June day. It also allowed me to cry, something I always like to do to remind myself that I am, in fact, a human being. But now, I do it because it makes me feel as if I can talk to them. I've had more conversations with my dad and sister after their deaths than I ever had when they were alive. My main question was always this: How did we get here?

 

Alan with his friends

 

 

Alan dancing, probably to King Sunny Ade

Alan dancing with Anita at, what I believe, was their wedding reception

Alan at his graduation

Ana and a friend

Ana traveling to Godknowswhere, one of her favorite things to do

My father and mother immigrated to the US in the 70's. He went to college and worked as a taxi cab driver, while my mom took care of the kids and worked as a home health aide. He graduated with a double masters and started working for a major African bank. His Nigerian friends were also successful, hard working immigrants. On paper, the Kor family should have worked out. How did we get here? How did my hardworking, well-connected father die surrounded by vultures and buried in a cheap suit? How did my kind and beautiful sister, with a degree in accounting and a thirst for religion and travel, meet her end bleeding out on a hospital bed with a belly full of cancer? How did this family, who had so much promise, end up with no offspring and everyone alone? What really happened in that Brooklyn apartment? Was it the violence? Was it the "friends over family" mindset that my parents had, which was probably passed to them through their own upbringing? 

 

 

I don't have the answers to any of these questions. I always thought that one day, me and my father would have a relationship not as father and son, but as peers. We would have real conversations about the past not out of anger, but rather understanding. I would get to know him, understand him, and in turn, understand myself a little better. He was a wealth of knowledge that still had the potential to guide. And that's what I miss the most. The potential we all had to be better than what we would come to be.