Sisterly Bond Encircles Time

The Boston Herald

Walt was my best friend’s sister’s husband.  Janet brought him home one day when Rose and I were in our teens. And I gawked and Rose giggled because Janet was in love and batting her eyes and smiling sweetly even at us, and talking in the softest voice. And we weren’t used to seeing Janet this way.       

Janet usually ignored us. She was Tuesday Weld, blonde and mysterious and sexy, just a few years older than we were but way, way older. We were still Haley Mills in "The Parent Trap," goofy and scheming. We had a lot of growing up to do.        

When I would sleep over I would watch Rosemary with her sister and wonder at the connection, the bond that links sisters. I’d read about this, how sisters are so close that they can read each other’s minds and finish each other’s sentences. I didn’t have a sister and didn’t know if these things were true. So I watched.       

But I didn’t see any bond between Rose and Janet. I saw Janet painting her fingernails and styling her hair and ironing her clothes, going to great lengths merely to walk out the door in the morning, without having any contact with us. And I saw Rose and me as the real sisters, sitting beside each other at the kitchen table, watching Janet and laughing and saying, “She’s weird,” and “We’ll never act like that.” And “We’ll never, ever change.”

Even at Janet and Walt’s wedding, I didn’t see the connection. It was Rose and I who stood together at the edge of the dance floor and watched Janet, who was too beautiful to be real, and Walt, big and handsome, twirling her across the floor. Worlds separated us from them. Janet and Walt were grown-ups and Rose and I were kids and I thought, this is the way it will always be. Rose and I, together, forever - not Janet and Rose.          

But the bond was there, always. I just didn’t see. And every year it got tighter and stronger. Rose never said this, directly. But I heard it.  “We’re going to my sister’s.” “Janet and Walt are coming for the family dinner.” “I’m spending the week at Janet and Walt’s.”       

Our friends’ relatives live outside the circle of our lives. But just outside.  You know them through hearsay. You hear tales. You see them at parties and holidays and you talk and there is a connection.            

When Walt had a stroke a few weeks ago, Rose went to be with her sister. Before this, every conversation had begun and ended with talk of her sister’s new grandchild, Erik. Erik was the frosting on the cake. Her sister and Walt had two grandchildren now. Life was nearly perfect and Rose was happy because her sister was happy.         

Now she was feeling her sister’s pain.

Now the conversations were different. Walt was bad. Walt was good. Walt got better. Then he got worse.         

But then he got better again and he seemed to have turned a corner. He talked. And her sister was hopeful. And because her sister was encouraged, Rose was hopeful, too.         

Then Tuesday morning Walt died. It was sudden and unexpected. And it was devastating.         

I used to watch two sisters in the same house aggressively ignore one another, not talk, not make eye contact, not sit on the same couch never mind be in the same room. I can still see Rose walking up the stairs and Janet hurrying down, both of them practically splayed against the wall so they wouldn’t even accidentally touch.           

The sister thing, I was certain, was a myth.     

But life has shown me that it is not. I’ve seen it before with other sisters, the bond that I thought was invention. And I see it up close now with Rose who is bound to Janet not just by blood and time and history and a million shared memories, but by an unconditional, amazing love.        

“We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can fly by embracing each other.”       

There is no flying away from the pain and sorrow of death. But arms around each other can be a comfort. And a sister’s embrace is sorrow shared.