...the last breath...31dec16...

The verge of a cry grew heavy, right above the bridge of her nose, but she refused it.  She had never cried as an adult.  Never cried in Academy.  Didn't cry when her pelvis was smashed in a training accident.  She would not do it now.  She flatly refused.  Limited air.  She knew better than flail her arms.  Time and energy were her world right now.  Distance was a star that she would shoot for.

She was falling, end over end, away from the hull of what once was the Halifax.  Mei was blown clear when the exterior hallways collapsed, depressurized by the explosions of the unknown capital ship.  She could see them now, a brown flat dot in the distance, flaring with a few missile hits, mere dots.  They were 20% declination to 30,0 to the Halifax - a minor blind spot - but an effective one.

First stop momentum.  She poised her body as if she were taking off in a rocket pack from the ground, her hands and feet at a similar angle.  Mei watched the Halifax as it swung out of view.  Easy.  No need to waste air.  The oxygen bag enveloped her body on the abrupt change in pressure from the hallway into space.  It had about fifteen minutes worth of breathable time.  The battery had enough to get her back to the Halifax.  More than likely picked up as a prisoner.  Better than death.

She closed her eyes into squints and focused on her position and fall away from the ship.  She could see others, still in death, floating away.  There was debris.  Chunks of the asteroidic skin that enveloped the capital ship.  Steel.  If one had the chance to hit her, she may as well give up.

Slow.  She released oxygen toward the direction of her spin, easing it out of her hands with a small release button.  Instead of overcompensating the entire spin, she let go of the release once the ship was out of view.  It saved energy.  Energy that was going to be needed to give her momentum back toward the ship.  If she blew it all at once, that was it.

Her Academy drill officer, Andrews, came immediately back.  This will save your life.

Let's see, Andrews.  Mei was calm for being minutes from death.  You have to be.  Living in space for over seven years now, you were only inches from death anywhere on the ship.  This was a war, not a field trip.  Their losses, like the Halifax, would be yet another blow for the Bureaucracy.

After three spins, slowing each time, she made a direct line for herself toward the Halifax.  Escape pods were popping from ventral.  That's where I'll head.

She very easily released more air, this time pushing behind her, toward her legs.  It started to bring her forward, pushing against the initial momentum that led her here.  She did not look behind her, only forward.  She didn't look at how much energy and oxygen were left.  It would be a distraction and panic will make her heart rate soar.

She started to move and felt the cold of space start to creep into the suit.  It was only rated for so much, and it had already gave a lot of itself.  A little more.  Once she felt she had the momentum, she stopped the release.  She slowed her breathing.  The Halifax grew larger.  Fires had broken out all around it.  No large debris seemed to be ahead of her.  She fixed herself to the bottom of the ship and toward the floating pods.  They did not push far from the ship, just close to rely upon the Halifax's incidental gravity.  It must not be in danger of exploding, that is good.  But fire must be the reason the ventral crew left.

Twenty minutes from the ship.  Her air would not make it, but, if she could will herself to pass out, she may make it.  She had a flechette that would knock her out.  She pulled on it from the outside of the suit and it just needed to be pulled away and angled toward the soft of her forearm.  She made sure that she was correctly angled.  One deep breath, and she injected herself.

The cold of the needle and the icy liquid as it ran into her arm was a shock, but only temporarily.  Mei instantly felt the effect of the drug and passed out.  She watched the Halifax and could see the small silhouettes of the crew as they busied themselves in putting out its fires...

...for my little sister Joanna...

To my cos Jo - missed dearly.

As is Filipino custom, it is almost a disservice to call Jo my cousin.  With a unique position in the family, I am an eldest
cousin, so I am called 'kuya', or, 'big brother' by any cousin younger than me.  Jo was one of the first to call me this.  So, my heart and experience call her 'little sister', and so she is.

The first time I knew about her was when her parents visited in the quiet of the night, before Christmas, 1979.  Auntie was bursting at the seams, Jo still in the womb.  Auntie and Uncle stood in the doorway of our very small apartment on Knott Ave.  I was a wee one and excited to have a baby on the way...but, alas, Jo wouldn't come until the next month, back home in the 'Isles'.

An extended stay came in the summer of 1987 (if recollection serves), where my sister(s) Loni and Jo were formally terrorized by a young teenager in the form of me.  Looking back and looking to what Jo came to be, is such a crystallizing truth: talent, poetry and song came to her at such a young age.  Where everyone that knows her now would easily realize that Jo was born singing.  She entertained the family for hours with a strong, clear voice...it raised and echoed along the backyard and into the alleyways of Catherine Drive...meeting the applause of the family that sat grinning from ear to ear.  The air that summer was warm and heady, hardly any clouds in the light yellow sky.  Jo loved wearing simple, colorful one piece dresses even back then.  (Her hair was always long, an insistence by her mother at first, grew into a habit.)

While in the (US) Army, assigned to a remote site in Germany, I scraped money together to visit the British families in the Fall of 1991.  Jo was as entertaining as ever, bubbly to have family visit her for once.  As we drove from Heathrow and passed through various tunnels on the way to East Ham (E6), Jo would spout, "You are now entering the time tunnel."  I never asked her to stop, it was too precious, especially in that 'accent'.  The holidays were around the corner, so the massive meal my Aunts and Uncles put together was full of spiced meats, literally hanging precariously off the table.  I had never seen so much food in my life.  Jo was there, bouncing off the walls singing and dancing.  "Yes," I can say to anyone if they ask, "Jo was always singing and dancing."  I have no memories of her doing otherwise.  Even on phone calls with my Aunt, you could hear Jo inexhaustibly singing her heart out.

When my mom married my step father, Jo came out again, this was summer of 1997 (again, hoping I have these dates correct, or my mother will pinch).  Jo was definitely a young woman and the exuberance of youth settled into a more realistic and somber Jo.  However, she was writing gobs of poetry and filling up notebooks.  Not a night went by during that visit that she would go through her poems and share sketches from her notebooks.  They were raw, and honest, and real.  I respected her as an adult at that moment.  As much as I may write, there is a veneer to it all, as is my voice, where Jo was fearless in honesty.

We would keep in touch of course.  She would send me snippets of poems.  Phone calls (before social media).  I wrote a few forgettable things back, as I was still finding my own voice.  We would challenge each other to do more.  She had her dreams and I encouraged them to the hilt.  We would talk constantly, probably over the last decade, on her coming out to LA and making a go.  BUT, Jo kept finding breadcrumbs to continue going down the path of her dreams.  Jo, as hard as it was for her, would also strike unwavering down that path.  Even with the allure of family and of California, which she could have easily pivoted here, she stuck to it.  My respect was always the same, and, hopefully, more importantly, I would let her know.

The family, beyond me, would constantly ask that she come out.  We offered to pay - free everything.  Philippines or California.  But, Jo as adamant as ever, would find a new opportunity, or the glimpse of an opportunity, and play it.  No one begrudged her for it.  We knew that her dream was strong.

With my sister's wedding, Jo came out again, now only a few years ago, 2012.  The wedding plans took much of the time, but we got to talk, she got to meet my boys and my wife.  We had a tremendous time with the wedding and the parties.  It was a quick glimpse if we could simply have her stay.  Of course we pitched it again.  Of course, she stuck to the path.

Back in March, Jo sent along a video with her crew, as a birthday wish to my grandmother in the Philippines.  We were all in the Islands for my Apu's party.  Jo was (joyfully) tethered to a show - so we were ecstatic and understanding.  We loved her and happy for what was happening in her career.

Then, a few weeks ago, while I was in NY on business, we Messenger'd each other about the elections.  It was about 2:30a NYC time.  We had a good conversation, which ended, as they normally did, with me asking for her to come out, on my dime.  She refused again, of course, because, she had big things happening.  And she did.  She made it.  She made it a few different ways, not just one.  She was made to do it, there's no doubt from me.  I saw it over the last thirty years, first hand.

I had just gotten back from the trip when I got the phone call.

Of course I miss her.  Dearly.  I miss her voice and her openness.  I miss her poetry.  I am not surprised by the outpouring that came out of the tragedy.  I struggled with what happened.  I have been in a daze for weeks and cannot still reconcile it with all that should be right in this world.  I can only come to grips that she was loved.  Boy, was she adored.  And she should be.

She went out on top.  She was over the moon with everything.  Jo had achieved a lifetime of ambition.

The family rallied around Auntie and Uncle.  Jo was taking care of as best as a person could ever want.  The outpouring of love and thoughts show that the world can be a good place.  A place where little girls with big dreams can sing, dance and act their hearts out on a stage with a payment of applause, smiles, tears and laughter.

She is interred close to the Yabut home and to my grandfather and my dad.  This is good.  Deep within the bosom of the Philippines is a heart that will hold her close.  As we do, there will be weekly visits.  This equates to constant prayers, an outpouring of what is best in all of us.

Little sister Jo I love you.  I can still hear you singing.

~~~

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/18/joanna-reyes-dies-hit-by-car-shoreditch

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/singer-joanna-reyes-hit-by-range-rover-on-traffic-island-and-killed-after-leaving-show-rehearsal-a3399331.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/parents-of-singer-killed-in-range-rover-crash-on-traffic-island-the-pain-inside-is-unbelievable-a3400346.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/actress-destined-west-end-fame-9286543