IT WAS A typical sunny Southern California morning, even though it was November. My wife and I were sitting in our living room in our usual places: hers on the couch, mine in the recliner. I don’t remember exactly what we were doing. Chances are, I was working on my laptop and didn’t look up when the phone rang and my wife answered. But I heard the sense of urgency in her voice. Soon, she gasped, began to sob, and handed the phone to me.

It was my brother-in-law, calling to tell us in a shaky voice that my sister had just died unexpectedly in her sleep.

She had struggled with her health for years. She was a cancer survivor twice over, but suffered for decades from the lingering aftereffects of radiation treatment. After moving across the country during the height of the pandemic to be near her grandkids, however, her health worsened. She had trouble speaking and swallowing, and had to use a feeding tube to get enough nutrition. She battled periods of nausea for which the doctors could find no cause.

Though she was obviously frail, however, nothing suggested she was near death. She woke up one morning to take her medication and went back to sleep, just as she did every morning. But this time, she didn’t wake up again. No one knows why.

All the family was grateful to see her physical suffering end. But we found ourselves in a new and unexpected chapter of life, a life without the woman who had been a devoted wife, mother, grandmother, and sister. As my wife reminded me after we received the news, that left me the last man standing: as the youngest growing up in a family of four, I was the only one left. There was now no one alive with whom I could reminisce about childhood, no one to check my faulty memory of the past, no one to help fill in the blanks.

. . .

A LITTLE OVER a month later, I had the challenge and privilege of officiating her memorial service. It started with preparing the slideshow, combing through the pictures sent by my brother-in-law and niece, and adding pictures I already had in my possession. It was surreal looking through these snapshots in time, at the way in which faces and fashions changed through the years. The images were both familiar and strange. Had we really been these people?

As expected, when my niece and brother-in-law spoke at the memorial, they had wonderful things to say about her love and compassion, about her devotion both to them and to God. One story that was new to me stands out. In recent years, she made sure to keep a supply of five-dollar bills at hand whenever she went out of the house, knowing that she would probably encounter people who were hungry or had no stable place to live. She wouldn’t even wait for them to approach her; if she saw people in need, she would approach them. That story alone was an inspiration to many who attended the memorial.

But in the days leading up to the service, I pondered what I should say. I had stories to tell, of course, some of which only her brother would know. And so many people had already sent cards and messages remembering her as a kind, gentle, and thoughtful soul, a godly person whose life was a quiet inspiration to others.

Would I follow suit?

Somehow, that didn’t feel right. I thought back to when my mother died of COVID on Christmas Day of 2020. Her death, too, had come as a surprise, as well as at the end of an incredibly difficult year physically. After Mom was gone, I thought of all the questions I should have asked her when I had the chance, all the conversations we could have had but didn’t. After all, it always seemed there was more time.

Until there wasn’t.

I felt the same way with my sister’s death. There were things I should have said to her and never did, and I didn’t realize this until it was too late.

Without going into unnecessary detail, let me put it this way. The sister I grew up with was a sensitive soul who nevertheless could have a feisty streak. And my parents weren’t about to permit what felt to them like rebellion, especially when they were angry. Because I had a more easy-going temperament to begin with, I seldom ran afoul of their anger. She wasn’t so lucky. And at times, their angry reactions and disciplinary methods went too far.

Again, she was a sensitive soul, and in some ways, I believe my parents crushed her spirit.

They didn’t mean to. My mother in particular had her own trauma history. It’s to her credit that she did much better with her daughter than her mother had done with her. But looking back over the years growing up with my sister, I can see how the playing field wasn’t level between us. I benefited from being the male child in a Chinese family; I benefited from having a temperament that didn’t set off my parents’ anger. She suffered in ways that I did not.

Somehow, that needed to be said. I should have said it to her in our later years, especially since I have spent nearly my entire adult life working in the field of mental health. I should have had a conversation with her that let her know, I see you. But I never did. We all just played our given family roles, avoiding the hard truths.

So I found a way to say it during the memorial, much as I have done here. I didn’t want people to leave the service thinking that she was simply a nice person, or a shy person, or a good person, or a quiet person, though all of that is true. More than that, I wanted them to know that her shyness in social settings was born of pain.

And I wanted them to know that given the way she had been treated as a child, it was all the more remarkable that she grew up to be a person with a generous and compassionate heart. She could have been sour, resentful, and suspicious as an adult. But God took hold of her in healing ways.

These were the truths I felt compelled to speak. I felt I owed it to her as her brother to bear witness to her pain. And in some ways, I needed to atone for not having spoken those truths before.

. . .

MY HOPE FOR you is threefold. First, I hope that you will take heart in the knowledge that God can heal broken people and use them to do good in a broken world. Even the greatest of saints was born a sinner; even the brightest of lights has been through darkness. But by the grace and mercy of God, we still have a place in his purposes.

Second, I hope you will foster communities in which we can freely voice our own suffering and compassionately bear witness to the suffering of others. Families and congregations can be beautiful places of support and belonging — and yet still leave us with the sense that our belonging is at risk if we don’t have it together in the right ways. If we truly believe in and understand God’s grace and mercy, we must do better.

But third and finally: I hope you don’t miss the chance to have the conversations you need to have. Things happen. Tomorrow isn’t a given, let alone an endless succession of tomorrows. Time runs out, and some opportunities never come again.

So think about it. What conversation have you been putting off? Or what conversation are you even now realizing needs to happen? Approach it prayerfully. Ask God to give you the ears to hear and the words to speak. Pray for an abundance of humility and compassion.

But don’t put it off forever. Take the initiative. Then see what a merciful God might bring out of it as a result.