Ten More Years: A Brother’s Reflection on the Woman Who Raised Me

“Ten More Years: A Brother’s Reflection on the Woman Who Raised Me”

 By a Clinical Psychologist Who Was First a Little Brother

We were leaving for Indonesia. Just a short trip. Nothing pressing on our minds. My sister had a few pieces of mail she wanted to give me, bills, notices, the kind of thing that could wait. I told her not to trouble herself. “I’ll get it next time,” I said.

But she came anyway.

She’d already been to the airport that morning to pick up her daughter. And yet, just a few hours later, she rushed back. For those few envelopes. Because I was flying off. Because it mattered to her.

After handing them to us, we sat down, my sister, her husband, my wife, and I, for a quiet cup of coffee before the flight. The conversation drifted as it always does: travel, health, bits of family news. Nothing heavy. Nothing unusual.

And then, in the middle of it all, she looked down at her cup and said softly, almost as if to herself

“I don’t know if I can live another ten years.”

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Her words landed like a prayer whispered to no one in particular, but I felt it catch in my chest before I even had the chance to blink. She wasn’t asking for pity. She was simply naming something that had been sitting in her bones for a while now.

My sister. My only sister. Eight years older. The one who mothered me while our mother worked long hours and our father drifted in and out of presence. She packed my schoolbag, defended me from bullies, and quietly rationed her own dreams so mine could grow legs. She was the one who held the household together with her small hands and stubborn heart.

And even now, at 77, she still worries about me, whether I’ve eaten, whether I’m overworking, whether my blood pressure’s under control. I’m 69. And to her, I’m still her kid brother.

But that day, the roles bent a little.

As a psychologist, I’ve spent decades bearing witness to the pain and resilience of others. My PATH framework, Psychotherapy Anchored in Transcultural Harmony, reminds me daily that healing is never just individual. It’s woven through culture, history, and relationships. The personal is never separate from the ancestral. We carry generations in how we speak, how we love, how we age.

And in our culture, elder siblings carry more than their share. Especially daughters. Especially sisters.

In many Chinese families, love is rarely spoken, but always shown, in bowls of cut fruit, in the way someone saves the drumstick for you, or quietly sacrifices without being asked. My sister never said, “I love you,” growing up. She just was love, folded into action, tucked behind worry, wrapped in silence.

So when she said she wasn’t sure she had ten years left, it wasn’t just about dying.

It was about wondering whether her life, the kind she’s lived so long for others, still had space for joy, for rest, for being held instead of always holding. It was a rare moment of vulnerability from someone who has spent most of her life being the strong one.

In the PATH model, we speak of four pillars:

• Presence – being fully here for the moment, beyond roles and expectations.

• Attunement – sensing beneath the surface, listening with the heart.

• Transcendence – honoring the soul’s journey across time and lineage.

• Harmony – restoring balance, not perfection, within and between.

That afternoon, I didn’t respond with clinical insight. I didn’t try to fix her feelings. I leaned in with Presence, and let her be the one who was held. I let myself feel the ache of impermanence, and I let her speak without interruption. That is therapy. That is love.

There’s a quiet grief in watching the people who shaped you begin to fade, not just physically, but in the way they start questioning their place in the world. And there’s a quiet grace, too, in staying close as they do.

If I could give her anything now, it wouldn’t be a guarantee of ten more years. That’s not within my reach.

But I can give her this:

• Ten more years of being seen, not just as “older sister” but as a full human being with her own joys and fatigue.

• Ten more years of laughter, even if we forget the punchline.

• Ten more years of being told, not just through action, but in words, you matter.

  
  

To anyone reading this:

Is there someone in your life, an elder, a sibling, a caregiver, who quietly carried you so you could become who you are today? Have you told them what they mean to you, not just once, but enough times to let it sink in?

We often wait for dramatic moments to say the things that matter. Don’t.

Say them over tea. Say them while folding laundry. Say them in between stories you’ve told a hundred times.

Because love isn’t in the grand gestures. It’s in the remembering.

With quiet reverence,

A brother, a psychologist, a boy who will always be her little 弟弟.