FOUND SISTERS

FOUND SISTERS

We stood there like a couple of idiots, whooping and hollering under a sky filled with lightning. It was the Flathead Valley in western Montana, a summer evening, and the rest of the family had adjourned from my mother's house down the street to the home occupied by my youngest sister - they were having a card game.  Two of us, my sister Jean and I, perhaps a bit disgruntled by the normal bickering that comes when a group of weary travelers gathers (especially when that group consists of all family) had stayed behind, feet propped up on my mother's porch rail, chairs leaned back on just the back legs (something I was always scolding my children for doing), smoking and taking in the high-mountain silence.  

Amidst a family crowded with sisters, Jean and I were a pair - after her untimely death, I found that she had written all her journal entries as letters to me.  "Dear Judy, here's what happened today...:"

That night, though, we were just two weary young women in tennis shoes, glad for the quiet of my mother's porch and the street in front of it.  A slight wind stirred the old maples that line the street, neighborhood dogs wandered about, and we could hear dishes clanking in someone's kitchen through an open window.  Then, suddenly, a flash in the sky, followed closely by a deep rumble.  Then another, and another.  We ran to the railing, leaning out to catch more of the deep blue of the evening sky over the valley. And, in moments, lightning filled the sky.  The next day's paper told us that in less than an hour, 1600 bolts had lit up the sky over town, while Jean and I danced underneath them.  

Jean was, in addition to being my sister, my best friend.  I am fortunate to have a family filled with remarkable women, but there was something more than just sibling admiration here - there was connection, and understanding.  She was an accomplished actress, I am a writer.  We shared a love of road trips and stories and magical moments.  Annually, we'd gather to lay in the dark and watch meteor showers, mostly in silence.  When one of us needed a lift, it was the other we'd call first - we had a code:  we'd say "just tell me" (not even bothering to say 'hello' first) and the other would unfailingly answer, "It's going to be alright."  And then, whatever it was, we'd talk it out.  Or not.

In the years both before and after her death I've found others who filled a similar place in my life - an innate trust, a connection.  I have taken to calling them my "found sisters" - sisters not of the same blood, but whose sisterhood is evident to me, and to them. Some of them, I've lost, as I've lost now two of my blood sisters.  I daily miss the presence in the world of my sister/friends Delna and Darlienne.  

The loss of a sister, whether a sister of blood or a found sister, changes everything in you.  Sibling loss is a shock to your identity, your sense of security, of self, of the entire world.  About four months ago, I found myself in a cabin at a remote writer's retreat, and there, under another sky filled with lightning, I began to write about the loss of a sister, about the pain that follows, about the struggle to become who you are without her in your life.  I've communicated with several friends, and am gathering stories of the loss of a sister as experienced by others.  

Meanwhile, whenever there's a lightning storm, I rush to stand under it, to look up and count the bolts, to breathe in the charged air.  That night so many years ago, Jean and I danced and laughed, pointing this way and that as the bolts exploded above us, until we couldn't any more, until the sky was alive with fire and it wasn't possible to move and point fast enough, so we wrapped arms around each other and stood and watched in silence.  That great power and our silence were one thing: one indestructible, shining thing.  

It was a thing - that night, the fire in the sky, our joy - that did not die with her, but lives on as something changed.