A sister who watched over me

My sister and I shared a childhood filled with privilege, sorrow and loss. We went to the same K-12 school(which she loved) and summer camp ( which she hated). We danced in our living room to Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. We played recorder duets. We shared the third floor of our Brownstone – she had the garden view, I had the street and The Barbizon. We travelled and went to museums and shows. We knew all the words to every Flanders & Swann album and all The Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. We sang in the church choir together, but we were as different as night and day. She wanted to stay home and read. I wanted to go outside and look for birds and see what was growing. She played the guitar, I played the piano. She was serious and studious. I was silly with a nervous giggle. She created works of art, I colored outside the lines.

She was seriously brilliant. Four years older than I was , but six years ahead of me in school. She had a November birthday, so she was young for her class and then she skipped her senior year of high school and went to college at 16 with a perfect SAT score and moved to England. I stayed close to home.

She was always Mary in the Christmas Nativity, beautiful and serene, her hair so long she could sit on it. I was a shepherd in a burlap costume, with self trimmed bangs, pulling up my socks and being shushed by the pageant director. She taught me sign language to keep me occupied in the choir stalls.

I was an annoying little sister. Constantly peppering her with questions and seeking her company. I had the advantage of youth and resiliency. I never really knew or could remember, the parents we lost. I had snap shots. She had full length movies. The toll on her psyche was much harder to bear than mine.

She slammed a lot of doors in my face on her search for peace and quiet. Often on our way to school or church, she was so irritated to have me tagging along, we would walk uptown on opposite sides of Madison Ave, screaming at each other across the street, turning the heads of our fellow pedestrians, the way that only city sisters who love each other can do:)

As an adult, she became an episcopal priest. I stopped going to church. She was usually late and did things at the last moment. I liked to be early and plan in advance. She listened to Gregorian chants while I turned up James Taylor and Carly Simon. She read patristics, the early church fathers written in Ancient Greek and received a PhD from Oxford. I read Victoria Holt and Daphne Du Maurier. I could go on and on.

We found common ground in the summers, taking our children to the beach and blueberry picking. We made a meal out of drink and talk time, we knit and played with watercolors. We shared the long goodbye of caring for our stepmother as Alzheimer’s eroded her memory. We each survived multiple surgeries. We emailed, texted and talked on the phone. We played Words with Friends. We read Louise Penny, Roz Chast, Motherless daughters and all the Mapp and Lucia books. We watched The Crown, Doc Martin,and Downton Abbey. We shared New Yorker stories and cartoons and Metropolitan Diary clippings. She checked on me during hurricanes and blizzards.

Despite all our differences we shared an atypical family history. While it often was embarrassing to tell people about our parents- were sort of proud of our orphaned heritage, the survivors that we were, and eventually it became our badge of honor. For the longest time she was the only other person I knew without parents. She was the only one who had been where I had been. She knew all my faults and fears and loved me anyway. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Now there is a void.

I was lucky to have her as a sister for as long as I did. We forged decades of happy memories in spite of our loss. As the word of her death spreads and old classmates are reaching out, I want to dial her number and let her know who called.

She had had the first vaccine shot and was looking forward to being able to travel to hold her first grandchild, who was born in August. This is what breaks my heart the most – All that joy that will be missed.

Like so many families who have lost a family member during this pandemic, all we can do now is cherish her memory, smile and let it live on.

Thank you, Lydia, for being my sister.

How I will miss you

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