Sisters

They walked together for many years, carrying with them the burdens of their youth.  The emotional baggage that came along with living in a home rife with alcoholism and abuse, and they tucked it neatly into their packs saying that they would someday deal with the aftermath of it all.  They never did, not really, for the scars would run deep and they would affect every aspect of their lives, every reaction they would have and every decision that they would make.

It was the decisions that would cause them to drift apart, like leaves fallen in a creek bed, each drifting with the current of their choice, taking paths that would carry them in almost opposite directions.  One would make choices based on her belief that it was the right thing to do and the other because of a need to protect her heart.  Ultimately, the thing that they needed the most, what they needed to help them accept their past and deal with the burdens of their youth, would be the same thing that they turned away from.  That one thing, that little bit of knowledge and understanding that they needed would be nowhere around and they would have to walk alone, trying to figure out where to go and how to react to adversity absent the other.

The loneliness of it all and the feeling that they were not totally understood by anyone would always been there.  They had been each other’s support group through their youth and removing that from their own mix would be their downfall.  They didn’t have each other to rely on when things became tough, when they needed a friend and a sounding board, leaving their pain to burn inside, charring what was left of their hearts.  They still loved, but they didn’t feel loved.  They felt alone and abandoned, isolated from the world yet they were surrounded by people, none of which understood their pain, the charred remains of their hearts.

It would be years and take a death to reunite them.  The death of a woman they called “Mother”, and though their father had died many years prior, he could not keep his family together during life thus his inability to unite them in his death was apparent.  Their father was the biggest catalyst for the pain they kept tucked away in their packs, he was abusive and a drunk, but their mother, despite her inability to stop him kept it all a secret, or so she thought.  The town knew, the families of both of their parents knew, but still their mother kept it all a secret, like a coveted treasure.  The secrets were what kept them together as children and drove them apart as adults.  One of them wanting to pretend that it hadn’t happened at all, that there was no turmoil, she was comfortable there and it was safe.  The other one accepted it and tried to make it better for everyone, though it was impossible to do; but she never hid from it, never created a fantasy world.  She lived in the here and now, always striving to make it better, to correct the past and sometimes to her own detriment.

When their mother died they hadn’t spoken in the twenty years prior.  Both of them having gone through years of remaining in bad relationships, relationships that were absent of the other’s support.  One of them having stayed for her children, the other having stayed not for her children, but for her siblings; yet both of them having stayed because they didn’t want to be failures.  Because their mother had stayed, despite their father’s shortcomings and they had been taught to do so, to stay in relationships that were bad.  It wasn’t that one cared more than the other, because that wasn’t the case and it wasn’t that one needed more than the other, but the death of their mother had made the younger of the two realize just what she had given up and that there were words that needed to be said that hadn’t been, she could not allow that to continue to have another member of her family leave this world without her having said those words.

So it was that the younger one embarked on a journey, one that would fill her head with thoughts of rejections and her heart with fear.  She had always known where her siblings were, even though she kept it a secret from her husband for years, she had to, but she knew and she knew that this was the time.  That the demise of her marriage, the crumbling of her family, despite her attempts to keep it intact, taught her something important and she needed to make an attempt to correct the mistakes that she herself had made.  That lesson was simple in her mind; that families are not a fantasy, they are real and they all suffer some sort of dysfunction, no matter how hard you try to conceal it.  They are just as flawed as a blemish on a fine piece of furniture and covering the flaw with a vase of flowers does nothing to correct the flaw.

The journey would be hard and the ability to correct the past, or at least put it into perspective would not just be about her, but about the willingness of her siblings to accept her back.  She could do nothing more than try and so she mustered all of the courage inside of her.  Maybe, just maybe her mother, from her final resting place was guiding her; she had to believe this for it gave her courage and strength.  She needed those things for she had always been a frightened little girl.  The child that ran from her own shadow needed that courage more now than she ever had for there was no one to protect her from the past, her childhood or her failed marriage.

She stood there as the door opened, not sure what would happen and expecting anger.  The two of them stood there looking at each other in a quizzical manner; not sure what to say or do, lending the moment to an awkward silence wherein you expect to hear the sound of a missile having been dropped.  Eventually, the silence would be broken and they would begin to talk.  It was just a moment in time that seemed like an eternity, but it was a moment that would reunite them for all the right reasons.  They would agree that the past, the years that they had spent apart would be forgotten for they both knew they had a bond that ran deep within them.  They both knew that they needed each other; that their love had not died but rather left in their packs until they could open them again.  The leaves of their lives that had fallen on that creek bed so many years prior had eventually found their way back together to rest comfortably against the shore line, carried by the current of life.

 

 

"The blood that runs through you is shared by those that have shared your life, your experiences.  They know your pain and your joys for they have also known them." (me 2013)