Ask and listen : a gentle afternoon with my sister

I enjoyed my outing with my sister very much. I took her on a long drive to a country town on the way to the coast and we pottered around in antique and woodworking stores then went for afternoon tea, our chat was fairly light but I asked her a lot questions about what happened in the years leading to her breakdown. I knew some of what happened but I had not really sat with my sister and asked many of these questions before. She spoke about the sense of losing touch with her identity as she and her husband went through painful changes and he eventually left her but in a very slow underhand way. It turns out they were scammed by several opportunistic people and her husband gullibility meant they got trapped in some very difficult situations.

It felt good to spend such a gentle afternoon traveling through the beautiful wintery landscape as we drove the 30 or so kilometres to our destination. I felt a sense of completeness in the time we had together and as though I have been over the past few days making some deeper peace with aspects of my past. While I see how I felt that it was difficult to be around my family, I also see how I longed for them and I see what decent hardworking people my family really are. It is the same sense of my family I got when I attended my older brother’s granddaughter’s 21st back in December, most of the adults there were related to my brother’s family through business and they all spoke so highly of my family and many of 7 them had been working for them for so many years. The problems in our family all came more from overriding emotions and having to work far too hard to survive and in so doing sacrificing emotional connections.

It occurred to me how I did a 180 degree turn around from the work hard ethic of my family from about 2004 onwards, both my sister and I came back to our home town to support our mother in her final 7 years of her life. We were speaking of how little she hears from her youngest son because he is so wrapped up in his own life, which is probably very natural in many ways but strikes me as sad considering all that my sister has been through. I know my Mum was my sister’s biggest supporter so her death has hit home hard, although my sister doesn’t express much of what she feels. I felt real love for my sister when I dropped her back home, I thought of what I longed from her when young that she could not give but that was due to the fact that neither of my parents had close relationships with or any siblings at all and my sister was left to take care of me at times both parents needed to be there for both of us but were not, at least not emotionally.

Its so comforting to have that sense of deep peace this afternoon which only comes about when we know deep in our heart and soul we have done the thing most in alignment with love. I think of all the anger I had towards my mother and sister at times but I see also how I pushed them away too. I think of the times my sister dropped everything to come be with me when in my last relationship I was being emotionally abused, I sometimes forgot these things when my unresolved grief was overpowering me. I thought today too how its never too late to reach a new perspective on old things including suffering and pain, the wisdom of years of experience and much suffering at times deeply transforms and softens us. Today I am grateful for the lessons and that my sister is still alive in my life, even if she never calls me at the moment I know she needs me and I need her and I can act on that knowledge to be there rather than let my sore and sorry ego lead me to cut off emotionally.