Friends at any rate

They were really best friends.  They were more than 10 years apart in age, but it never seemed so much.  The older had helped care for the younger; the younger babysat the older’s children.  They liked each other, regardless.

They didn’t call each other too often as adults, for it didn’t matter how long or short the duration between, the bill was always huge.  The physical distance between them was huge and so it always seemed warranted.  They knew each other better than they were supposed to, it seemed.  The younger was better at writing, but the older would put it off.  How do you say the things you want to say on paper anyway?  It just looked so bad; so the paper communication was left to happy news, birthdays and Christmas for the most part.  And yet they each knew that a trustworthy, open heart was always available when there was noone else you could trust –or hurt. 

Their parents were caring people, but often the stuff of life was not for those ears or hearts.  But a sister could listen and advise and care without the harm.  They neither assumed they ‘knew’ the other’s dilemma.  That was part of the comfort they found.  But since they were raised in the same yard, they had a clue.  One didn’t have to live it to feel it for the other.  They loved.

Once, the younger went to stay with the older for a week among her job, family and belongings.  It was a difficult time for the younger and it was a stretch for the older as well.  They walked and visited for two days while the kids were at school and no one else was there to interrupt the flow of silly to serious, poignant to ridiculous, elevating to devastating.  On the 3rd day, the younger was so sore, she could not get up the stairs from the room she was occupying.  It seemed quite comical because she was the athletic achiever.  She ran; she rode horseback; she swam.  But her older sister had walked her into inability.  That day they hung out at her house.  As the day wore on, the younger began to gain a bit of mobility.  Before it was done, they were laughing and dancing.  Yet when the others were there, they both behaved as adults.  It was a shame. 

The younger’s marriage was breaking up.  It took another year to be finished.  The older sister cautioned but comforted.  She kept telling her sister that it could be fixed.  The younger wasn’t the activist, but she wasn’t wanting it fixed either at first.  The whole ride had been on a rutted road for sure.  In the next year, with her sister’s help she bent her mind to a proactive stance.  She’d get this puppy back on its feet.  But it didn’t happen.  Her sister came for a short visit at her parents’ house just after the divorce.  They hugged, they exchanged few words.  The younger was comforted by the older’s presence.

It was less than 10 years from that visit to the day she stood at her older sister’s funeral and wondered “How will I go on without you?” 

A lot of love and laughter and long walks filled those years as well, though none as long or as intense as that one visit.  Mentor, confessor, friend.  How she is missed these long years later.