Family doesn't always come with easy answers.
My oldest sister and I have always had what my mom used to call a love-hate relationship.
She's seven years older than I am, and according to her, it started the day my parents brought me home from the hospital.
She used to tell me that I looked like an Eskimo baby and that she wanted them to take me back. Apparently, she ran to her room crying.
She also never let me forget one of her childhood birthday parties. Her friends were paying attention to me—the cute, innocent toddler—and she was furious.
Those stories became part of our family history.
As we got older, our relationship was okay at times. At other times, it was anything but.
There were things that happened between us that hurt me deeply. Some involved my children. Some changed relationships in ways that can't simply be undone.
They're not stories I'm going to tell here because they aren't only mine to tell.
Eventually, I reached a point where I couldn't do it anymore.
We didn't speak for close to fifteen years.
I saw her once during that time.
I was at a gym with a friend when my sister came over to speak to me. After she walked away, my friend told me I'd turned white as a ghost.
I remember thinking that day that I might never see my sister alive again.
And I had to accept that.
Years later, when she was having serious health problems, she reached out to me.
The door opened again.
For a while, we were fairly close.
Then old patterns returned. Something happened that affected someone I love very much, and I stepped back again.
We haven't had much of a relationship since.
And now my sister is very ill.
She recently had two massive heart attacks and quadruple bypass surgery.
She's finally well enough to have visitors.
I know that because I've heard it from other people.
I haven't gone to see her.
And I don't know if I will.
That's difficult to write.
Because there's a part of me that thinks, She's your sister.
There's another part that remembers why I stepped away.
And then there's the part of me that keeps wondering:
How will I feel if she dies and I didn't go?
I already know what it is to lose a sister.
When my sister Barb died, I was fortunate enough to be with her near the end of her life. We had talked about death. I knew what she believed, and she knew what I believed. I was able to be there with her and help her through her passing.
My relationship with Barb was completely different.
Losing her doesn't tell me what I should do now.
But it has taught me something about finality.
There comes a point when there isn't another chance.
No more conversations.
No opportunity to pick up the phone.
No chance to walk into the room.
No possibility of making a different choice.
You'd think knowing that would make this decision easier.
It doesn't.
There are reasons my oldest sister and I don't have a relationship.
Being ill doesn't erase them.
But those reasons don't mean I don't care about her either.
And maybe that's what I'm struggling with most.
Both things can be true.
I can care about my sister and still not want the relationship we've had.
I can remember the things that hurt me and still feel sad that she's suffering.
I can believe I had good reasons for stepping away and still wonder whether I'll regret staying away now.
Families are complicated.
We sometimes talk about them as though sharing blood should somehow make everything else disappear.
But she's your sister.
Life is short.
You have to forgive.
You'll regret it someday.
Maybe.
But the people saying those things haven't lived inside the relationship.
They don't know everything that happened.
They don't know what it cost to stay.
And they don't know what it cost to leave.
My sister has her version of our history.
I have mine.
And I know I'm not blameless in all of it.
There are things I could have handled differently. Times I could have communicated better instead of saying nothing until I'd had enough. I'm sure there are things she remembers that hurt her too.
That doesn't change the things that happened or the reasons I eventually stepped away.
It just means our story is complicated.
We are two sisters who have spent a lifetime carrying our own hurts, our own memories and our own versions of what happened between us.
I don't know yet whether I'm going to visit her.
Maybe by the time you read this, I'll have decided.
Right now, I'm trying not to make the decision based on what a good sister is supposed to do.
I'm trying to ask myself something much harder.
What choice can I live with when there is no longer an opportunity to make a different one?
I don't have the answer yet.
And maybe I don't need to have it today.
Maybe some questions need to sit with us for a while before we know what our answer is.
A thought to take with you
We often say blood is thicker than water. But does being family mean we have to put our own feelings aside?
And if you knew there might not be another opportunity, would that change your answer?
Something come to mind?
If you'd like to share it, I'd love to hear what this story made you think about.