{"id":570,"date":"2016-09-05T13:41:49","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T18:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=570"},"modified":"2019-06-07T15:47:59","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T15:47:59","slug":"on-sibling-bonds-and-remembering-jane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/on-sibling-bonds-and-remembering-jane\/","title":{"rendered":"On Sibling Bonds, and Remembering Jane"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Back Camera<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s a funny thing about sisters and brothers.<\/p>\n

You might long for them if you don\u2019t have any.\u00a0 But if you do, nothing in your life will ever drive you nuts in quite the same fashion.\u00a0 That is, if you are like most of humanity.<\/p>\n

Ours was a family of four kids, so common in those boomer days, three girls followed by a boy. My memories of my siblings as young children are distinctly unremarkable.\u00a0 They might have been the bathroom wallpaper or the kitchen chairs–just there, the landscape of daily life, to be worked with, or around, as daily functioning might require.\u00a0 No more, no less.<\/p>\n

And then there was later, when inevitable dissonance and occasional outright war emerged with the arrival of adolescence.\u00a0 Cruelty comes so easily then, and we devised our fair share and pointed it at each other.\u00a0 When my older sister embarrassed me in front of, heaven help us, a BOY, I wrote a filthy epithet on her bedroom mirror in Vaseline (an interesting tool, yes?), using words I had never uttered out loud and might not have been able to define.\u00a0 This awkward retribution earned me one of the most significant punishments of my young life.<\/p>\n

But we three girls earned an even better one when we decided to show our young brother that he could not expect privacy in our shared bathroom.\u00a0 When he sensibly resisted by locking us out, we picked the lock with a coat hanger and burst in before he could finish his business.\u00a0 Our strict father exhibited zero tolerance for such bullying, thank goodness.\u00a0 And really, remembering how we often we tried similar nonsense, it is a miracle that my brother is not a serial criminal, and still speaks to us.<\/p>\n

Such stories, added to the routine family dynamics of adulthood, can crowd the heart at times.\u00a0 So, when my daughter used to joke that she wished for a sister, I joked in return that I would happily give one of mine away.<\/p>\n

That was before we lost one.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Back Camera<\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps more than any of the rest of us, my younger sister Jane signaled very early the adult she would become.\u00a0 Named for both my parents, she was my mother\u2019s spiritual and emotional twin, a magnetic personality endowed with faith and energy and a focus on others that drew people to her like hummingbirds to red petunia blossoms.<\/p>\n

Her innate sense of right and wrong was maddening when we were younger.\u00a0 Constitutionally incapable of tolerating unkindness or rule-breaking, she became an incorrigible tattle-tale.\u00a0 For this saintly behavior we christened her Susie Good, and we dispensed revenge any time we could manage it without being caught.\u00a0 We mocked her teeth, adding the nickname Snaggletooth (from the villain in the cartoon Quick Draw McGraw<\/em>) and denied her entry into many of our games for no explainable reason.\u00a0 Once on vacation we told her the only place available for her to sleep was in the closet, then watched with waning teenage superiority as she made the best of it and refused to cede victory by complaining.<\/p>\n

A disposition to care for others that was embedded in her bones drew her to nursing school, and for a quarter century she nursed surgery patients, wounded diabetics, birthing mothers, and a long list of others.\u00a0 She left active practice a few times, unable to disregard frustrations at the system, but she always went back to where she could get her hands on people in need.\u00a0 When I observed that she would have made a great doctor, with more money for less hours worked, she rolled her eyes and shrugged, noting sarcastically that nurses are often closer to patients than doctors, and wasn\u2019t that, after all, the point?<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember when I went from mocking what I perceived as a campaign for sainthood to admiring the person she became.\u00a0 It might have been when I noticed that she showed up at every major turning point in my adult life.\u00a0 She spent the night before my wedding, dispensing meds for the wedding-day diarrhea, my system\u2019s physical signal of the unspoken fears that I was making a terrible mistake.\u00a0 She took turns with my husband coaching me through labor, joking with the doctor about my cranky demands and patiently explaining every step.<\/p>\n

Years went on, but her pattern remained.\u00a0 With my older sister and brother, she came to unpack on moving day and stood by as I sobbed through my daughter\u2019s graduation.\u00a0 She drove an hour to my house so I didn\u2019t have to be alone to tell my daughter the cat died.\u00a0 Then my daughter married, and her aunt helped coached her through the birth of her first child.<\/p>\n

My opportunity to try to balance the ledger of debts arrived way too soon, in the way you think happens to other people. \u00a0Suddenly, other people were us.\u00a0 Diagnosed in her late forties with a rare and lethal form of breast cancer, she set out to wage war, and she succeeded so well for so long that at times we allowed ourselves to assume she would be among the few who beat the odds.\u00a0 Whenever possible, I showed up for appointments and treatments and tests and sat in as bench support.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even with all her professional insight, the system occasionally failed her, with an insurance snafu or a small clinical step overlooked.\u00a0 At those moments, I bared proverbial claws and wanted nothing more than to use them to rip flesh somewhere on somebody, anybody, creating an uglier, bloodier version of Shirley MacLaine\u2019s rant around the nurses\u2019 station in Terms of Endearment<\/em>.\u00a0 My ferocious anger at any missteps astonished even me, but it didn\u2019t take psychoanalysis or genetics to understand its roots. Watching her struggle was the tiniest millimeter away from experiencing it, since a sister is the nearest replica ever created to a woman\u2019s own being.<\/p>\n

When she said she just wasn\u2019t up to attending the birth of my daughter\u2019s second child, instinct told me time was short.\u00a0 Diagnostic affirmation soon followed.\u00a0 Along with her own two daughters\u00a0 (both steadfast, brave and pragmatic like their mother), all three of us siblings took turns at her bedside in those final days.\u00a0 In my heart, deepest dread joined with surprising gratitude for the privilege of being nearby, of witnessing the final steps in a journey she had defined so remarkably, all the way to the end.\u00a0 As I bent to say my farewell on the last day I saw her, I said, \u201cI\u2019ll see you again.\u201d\u00a0 And I still believe it.<\/p>\n

A person who lives life in service to others leaves behind a wide legacy of gratitude and, for one taken so young, profound heartbreak.\u00a0 My own sense of loss at first seemed strangely functional, oddly physical.\u00a0 It was like a power tool had ripped away one of my toes or fingers, or like I sat on a stool with a leg missing and was dumped sharply onto my butt on a concrete floor.\u00a0 When grief is described like a part of you is missing, I had never before known how literally that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

Thinking of her so constantly three years after she left us, I\u2019m watching young siblings in our newest generation.\u00a0 Their bonds and conflicts, their tender affection and dissonance, all ebb and flow with time and context.\u00a0 \u00a0After Buddy and I viewed a spectacular exhibit of antique Italian cars one day recently, the first thing he selected in the museum gift shop, without pausing to ask, was a present for his sister.\u00a0 A couple of days later, I stepped in between them just in time as he screeched in frustration and lunged for her.\u00a0 Her mistake?\u00a0 She had boldly subverted his demands that she stay on her side of the line (literally) and color on her own dadgum side of the page.\u00a0 And so it goes.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Will love triumph over the oceans of things that shadow sibling relationships over time?\u00a0 Will they stay close enough to cheer each other\u2019s successes, maybe even help the other one get there? If one is touched by tragedy, will the other stand shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to fight whatever needs fighting?\u00a0 Of all my prayers for their future, none is more fervent than the one hoping nothing alters that singular sibling bond.<\/p>\n

That, and the chance to be around long enough to see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a funny thing about sisters and brothers. You might long for them if you don\u2019t have any.\u00a0 But if you do, nothing in your life will ever drive you nuts in quite the same fashion.\u00a0 That is, if you are like most of humanity. Ours was a family of four kids, so common in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aging-parents","category-grandkids","category-mid-life-adventures","category-siblings-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}