Siblings: My Sense of Community
Last Friday, December 2, 2016, an artist warehouse known as the “Ghost Ship” in Oakland, CA was engulfed in flames.
Throughout my life, my definition of what a true sibling is differed from everyone else. I was born and raised into a family with no brothers or sisters. I never really understood why but that my parents married late. But I never once felt the need for another sibling because my parents worked extremely hard to find me friends that I could play with so that I’d never be alone. But these people to me were just considered friends, but never a brother or a sister. So for someone without any, what does a sibling look like and how can they impact your life any different than a friend could?
Aside from growing up in an American society, I was raised into family of Christians. And for that reason, we attended church every Sunday. Up until three years old, the church that my parents took me every week, did not have any children my age. In fact, many times my father would bring toys from home and babysit me in a separate room of the church and watch me until my mother got out of mass. As I grew older and attended public school, I started to make many friends. I got to become very close with a Caucasian student named Joey. Joey was my best friend throughout preschool and elementary school. We always played together during recess, went over to each other’s houses after school, planned sleepovers, and even coordinated Halloween costumes. I remember one year, we went as the Men in Black as Agent K and Agent J. Up until that point in my life, Joey was considered like a brother to me. But this would soon be cut short due to the fact that he would transfer schools to a private school. This was hard for me because I wouldn’t see Joey as often as we used to. Although we still played after school, we started to drift apart from our different agendas and priorities. My definition of a sibling then was that we would always stay together. But Joey had left.
It wasn’t until the end of Middle School to High School that I made “real” friends. Friends that would always have your back if you were in need of help. By this time, I had followed my parents and attended a different church. This church unlike the previous, had more kids near my age. This church, unlike many others, had two different congregations for the two different languages the pastor spoke the message in. One being English, and the other being Japanese. Following my parents, I attended the Japanese congregation despite having more kids my age on the English side. But due to lack of activities and communication between the two congregation, I just passed by these kids without saying a word to them every week. As the number of youth kids increased as our church, the board members decided to hire a youth group leader for our church. The leader had coordinated events between the two congregations and created one joint meeting on Fridays afternoon. The first meeting, as you can imagine, was very awkward due to the fact that the English congregation kids were in one group, and the Japanese congregation kids were in another. The group leader desperately organized fun activities that would break the ice, but it definitely needed more than one meeting for everyone to be familiar with one another. After the meeting was over, I was getting ready to be picked up by my parents. But before I could, one girl approached me and introduced herself along with her older brother. What I didn’t know was that this conversation would change my life forever.
Last Friday, December 2, 2016, an artist warehouse known as the “Ghost Ship” in Oakland, CA was engulfed in flames. It was an illegally run building, due to its unsafe conditions which include crammed space, lack of exits, and faulty and dangerous wiring. On top of everything, the whole place was considered a space for art and not for a living space that alone a venue for an event. But unfortunately, this was exactly the case. There were people living there and there was a musical event occurring that Friday night. From the result of this tragic accident, 36 bodies were recovered with that death toll expected to rise. I had heard of the story Saturday morning but like any other news, was quick to dismiss it. I felt sorry for the victims and their families but I did not feel a deep emotional connection with them. That of course is until I heard that someone I knew attended that event that Friday night, and was missing.
Throughout High School, I attended that Friday night youth group every week. The people that I used to pass by were now my closest of friends. We enjoyed each other’s company so much that we didn’t want to say goodbye to each other. We wanted to see each other more than two days a week. But this was difficult because we lived in different cities and had our own agendas to take care of. But one thing we did was to eat together as a youth group. The group would often go to Red Robin and enjoy each other’s company a little bit longer. We developed new friendships, new connections, and for the first time since Joey, I had people that I felt a deeper connection with than just a friend. But as time passed by, people moved away, had other obligations, or just fell away from the church. And because of it, I started to get scared. Scared that the same thing that happened with Joey will happen again. And through that time of despair, five friends stayed with me. One of which was Jenny, the girl who introduced herself to me on that first youth group meeting.
I had finally found someone I could call my sisters and bothers. I finally understood the true meaning of what it’s like to have a sibling. When they feel happy, you feel happy. When they feel sad and despair, you’d feel the same. When they are terrified or hopeless, you’d want to travel thousands of miles to comfort them. It is a type of love that is beyond compare. Not a love of infatuation but a type of love you share with your family. I had love Jenny, along with the other four in our group, as a true sibling that I never had.
My heart sank when I received the news that she had attended the event that happened at the Ghost Ship. But I was hopeful that she had made it out before the building was engulfed in flames. All of Sunday afternoon to Monday morning, I had every news channel on, every type of social media tabbed to find any bit of information I could find. Through the time of uncertainty and anxiety, I started to reminisce what Jenny had meant to me in my life.
Around 1pm on Monday, the family had posted to social media. The sentence started with, “With broken hearts, our family received the news today…” That was all I could muster up before the bursted into tears. Jenny, a figure who was there when I had nobody. Who accepted me when I was turned down. Who hugged and cried for my mother when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Who I had promised her to buy her her first drink once I returned from winter break when she turned 21. I partook in many forms of community. I had a mother and a father who loved me with everything they had. I had belonged into both a Japanese and American community who treats me equally. I belonged to a community at a church globally. In the readings Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics, and Community by Andoni Alonso and Pedro J. Oiarzabal, they explain that a community is not a geographical location but is built. “Put together from those around me and from memories…”. Jenny invited me into a community of brothers and sisters. I’ll always love her and miss her and I’ll never take the community she gave me for granted.
