Only Living Family Member

As a youth, we never fully comprehend that one day we may be the only living member of our family (in my case, I am #2 of 4 daughters - w/parents=6). Just received word that my youngest sister, Michelle Celia (middle name after our Jewish grandmother on my father's side -- the one sticking her tongue out in the picture above), had passed. She was only 54 and had suffered several health issues (obesity, diabetes 2, chronic kidney disease which landed her as a renal dialysis patient, broken foot, injuries from a car crash, and being raped by two men) leading up to her death in Apache Junction, AZ battling 107-degree weather. Born six years after my then youngest sister on New Year's Eve, Michelle was perhaps a birthday gift to our mother, Lynn (Maria de la Luz (Luce) Dominguez Quintana) -- for my mother's birthday was on New Year's Day.

Recently, a few people have come forward to share how sweet, kind and nice she was to them. Unfortunately, many in her family were not recipients of this light-sided nature.

While my father/mother passed in 2001/2013, it was in 2019 that my older sister, Diana (63) and other younger sister, Alice (58), passed prior to the pandemic. Sadly, what most may not share when a family member passes away is all the family trauma they endured as children. Fortunately, I was able to get away when I left my family at 18 to attend university (the first and only one in my family to ever graduate HS/attend and graduate college). Escaping the "black hole" of family life as I had defined it.

For within our family, there was a torrent of physical/emotional abuse fueled by alcoholic outbreaks from our parents (brutal fights, police were called, our mother and us, the children, would pack up and stay at friends' homes-only to return a few days later where the cycle would rear it's ugly head again a few months down the road.

After my father Irving's passing, it was discovered that he had sexually abused and/or attempted to sexually harass my three sisters, his nieces (and daughters) and my older sister's daughter, Christina (Dee Dee was my half-sister who was conceived from a rape my mother had endured as a nanny for a wealthy Texas family before meeting my father). My own tragic earliest memories were when I was seven, living on 22nd Drive in Phx and having to jump on my father's back to try and rescue my mother and get him off of her lying in a pile of broken dishes and a lamp cord wrapped around her neck. An embryonic Michelle was possibly only a few weeks within my mother's womb. Thus, perhaps receiving the most of a violent kinetic experience.

Sadly, ours was certainly a very broken home with many wounded children's hearts within.

This highly dysfunctional family would undoubtedly face in their lifetimes the effects of years of painful abuse, which naturally permeated throughout the cells locked away invisibly deep within their own internally (and forever) bruised/ battered bodies -- recreating and perpetuating families that were equally of or more devastating upon themselves (in a continuum of self-abuse/hatred) and sadly upon the next generation.

Having children taken from them for abuse or for having committed adultery, having those children placed in the care of the grandmother who was the initial abuser of her own first born (my half-sister Diana), whom she was abusive to since no one knew at the time about Dyslexia and in her frustration at my sister not being able to read, write or communicate properly, my mother's only recourse she felt was to physically punish her. Adding to the fact that my mother was physically beaten as a disciplinary action -- as too was my father.

My sister, Alice's first daughter, Meaghan, was taken from her. Then, becoming an alcoholic and smoking cigarettes despite having only one lung (removed as a baby for having a tumor in the other lung), having two hip replacements at 40 for all the steroids that she was given most of her life from the doctors for her bouts with pneumonia, and later being estranged from her own daughter, Brittany (Justine) for emotional abuse. And sadly, Michelle is representative of all the family abuse, taking on the weight (literally 300lbs of it) of all the tragedy and pain within our family that was never diagnosed nor ever healed from any of my parents or three sisters.

Sadly -- all such a vicious cycle of abuse and discrimination. As my mother (3rd Gen American - w/my GGrands3x Apache Chief/Chieftess, Warrior Woman Chiricahua Aunt bloodline -- as well as a combination of Navajo, Mexican (Chihuahua/Jalisco/ Michoacan/Sinaloa & 6 other regions in Mexico), African (Nigeria, Ghana), Asian, European (Spanish, French, German, Portuguese), Middle Eastern, Levant & So. Asian ancestry had been born/grew up in Van Horn, Texas, to signs that shouted: "No Negroes, No Mexicans, No Dogs, No Jews" -- all within a family where her own mother died of Lupus when she was in her teens, and her father was an alcoholic who passed from consumption shortly thereafter.

To escape drugs and physical/sexual abuse within her own family of 7 siblings, my mother fled to Arizona, where she met my father (1st Gen American - of 14 relatives, only 4 made it to the U.S. out of the concentration camps -- and who my GGrandfather 3x was a Rabbi (ancestry hailing from Ukraine, Ugheny, Moldova, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Romanian ancestry) from Milton Mass.

Although, my mother had genetically attempted to bear children that would not phenotypically resemble her Mexican heritage by having sex with my father (who was advised by his relatives in Boston not to marry her because she was Mexican and that would be like being with a Black woman and that she was not Jewish). Thus, I, their firstborn, was the only one with the Recessive weaker genes (of blue eyes, light straight hair, fairer skin hue) than the Dominant genes of my three sisters, whom 2 (Dee Dee & Michelle) had curly blk hair and 1 (Alice) had straight long blk hair -- and, all had dark brown eyes and dark skin -- as Mother Nature had intended to provide greater protection of our species with the more Dominant genes.

I recall having to defend my sisters from many boys of no color who shouted racist comments and bullied them in the people of no color schools/neighborhoods we attended in Phoenix, AZ and later after moving to Torrance, CA. As kids, we really weren't fully aware of what it meant to be bullied for being 4th Gen Americans by those who were either immigrant, 1st-3rd Gen Americans hailing from Europe/ Australia or Russia.

When our mother, finally having had enough of our father's abuse, decided to leave him, his threat to her was that if she left him, he would tell us (the children) that they were never married. So my mother told us, and she left him with only Michelle (12) left to raise. Ironically, later we would learn that my mother's family had Jewish ancestry since the Jews arrived in Texas in 1616. Any Mexicans with animal last names like Lobos (Wolf) Aguilar (referencing Eagle) or had Z that replaced S in names like Dominguez, Lopez was changed by Jews arriving here after the inquisition in Spain (Conversos, Landeros - The Hidden Jews). So my mother was, in part, Jewish.

Michelle loved wearing her Jewish Star, which our Aunt Edith had given to all of us and attending our cousin's bar mitzvah in Boston (where I learned that my father had attempted to french kiss her -- as also recently claimed did our male cousin.

As a kid, she was a joker, cracking jokes, always the loud one, defiant in a way, storming off if she didn't get her way, but still, the "baby" who usually got her way. She once tried out (or my mother signed her up and took her in at 4) for an Oscar Mayer commercial. Growing up, she always wanted what I had, from my blue eyes to having rats as pets, to my banana seat bike, to my gymnastics leotards and my barbie collection. I told her that she should be proud that her eyes were the better ones, for they were the dominant genes and stronger than my own recessive ones. But she didn't want to hear it or believe it.

Fortunately, she was never actually part of the physical abuse/beatings that her other three sisters received as kids -- due to my grabbing the leather strap at 16 mid-flight with my right hand - and putting my parents on notice that if they ever touched my sisters or me again, that there would be grave consequences.

Gratefully, they never did again.

I was recently informed that Michelle babysat the first Cat Woman, Julie Newmar's down syndrome son, along with other children. And that she was not happy about having to care for her own sister, Diana's children (our nephew, Jon and niece Christina) -- who later shared was also molested by our father. And when Christina told Michelle, she was ignored, and nothing was said or done about this violation upon a young child. And sadly, to this day, Christina is left with feelings of embittered betrayal and angered resentment toward her aunt. One would think if Michelle was sexually harassed or abused that, she would adamantly defend another family member from this hurtful and harmful act.

Michelle also resented having to take care of Dee Dee's children because she was denied having to graduate HS or attend college. Though these days, many desiring to truly graduate HS (not just take a GED) or attend college actually go back at any age (online or in-person) despite any family setbacks.

I was able to meet my cousins Hilda and Sylvia (her mom, my Aunt) in 2012 on my mother's side because Alice and Michelle went in search of her family after learning that she wasn't the "only child" and instead had seven brothers/sisters in Texas that we never knew about until then. Despite Michelle not having a good experience visiting some of them in Texas due to having some cousins on drugs steal from her, she surprised my mother by having two of my cousins, Hilda and Dolores(?), visit her.

Sadly, and perhaps in her cumulative years of toxic pain, grief and resentment, Michelle never allowed any of my mother's other three daughters (her first, second, and third) ever to speak to our mother when she moved from CA to AZ to live with her. And it wasn't until last year that I learned that my mother had died in 2013. Michelle had not informed any of my mother's other three daughters, and 2 of them had passed six years after our own mother's death without saying their goodbyes. Que lastima.