Dear Sister

October 3, 2025 / Hermionejh

I listened to a message you had left that sunny September day in 2023, letting me know you were in the hospital – ‘doing okay,’ although you said you were feeling very weak.

It’s hard to listen to now because you’re gone. It was just three months from your diagnosis to your death. As we talked during those months, you said that it had been a couple of years that things were starting to not feel right. You said you were tired all the time, and you couldn’t get to your doctor, and when you finally did, he minimized what was happening. Unfortunately, you weren’t someone who would demand being adequately treated.

By the time they had ordered tests when you had called me from the hospital, it was already basically too late (although no one could know that in the moment).

But I think you did know. I think that’s why you had me take you home that night. I’m sure you were terrified, and you were trying to run from it. I understand it now in a way that I didn’t before.

I’m so sorry that we never got back to the kind of friendship we had in our twenties. I don’t really know what happened, but maybe it was just time moving on and life shaping us.

I hope you know that I always loved you, and always wished that we could be friends again. I know that you loved me, but I didn’t feel like you liked me very much, and I felt hurt and defensive.

If there’s another place where I’ll see you again, I hope that we’re in our best selves with each other. But I’ll be glad to see you no matter what.

I’m also glad I saved your message – I’ll take the bitter to have the sweet.

An Arch

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

Life gets more cherished, not because I’m going to lose it, but because I have become aware of how precious the everyday was with others that I cared about.

Last year the daughter of a friend died and the funeral reception was held at a restaurant in Bernardston, Mass, that had a large separate building for such occasions. A woman I have known most of my life was there – indeed, most of the people there I have known as long – but she has always been special to me, even though most of it was periphery when I was young, and she was a decade older. It’s funny how that gulf seems so long when you’re young and you know it’s barely anything once you’re beyond that.

She was, and is, beautiful – inside and out, and she was not just kind, but present, whenever she was around- and I regret that I didn’t spend the time with her that day that one of my contemporaries got to, but I was overwhelmed by the multitude and had to leave. I did, however, sit next to her, and got to rest my head on her shoulder for a few minutes. Time fell away and I was 12 again.

She means so much to me, and I can see the arch of our lives. She was a contemporary of the majority of the people we were involved with, and I was a child, but soon going into my teen years. She seemed so cosmopolitan to me. She had a daughter several years younger than me and I enjoyed every moment she shared time and attention toward me.

She didn’t know my inner world. For all I know she thought I was fine and getting what I needed because I had learned early on that something is better than nothing, in several aspects of my life. I wasn’t consciously aware of that back then, but I am now.

She read a story with me and her daughter, but I knew that I got more of the ironic and funny bits than her daughter did, and we got to share that. That moment is emblazoned on my heart and in my mind forever.

It’s painful that I feel the ghost of that girl wandering through my psyche, still holding onto those precious bits like those desperate people who panned for gold in California must have done so long ago. I want her to get what she needs, and I don’t know why the well is so deep.

There are other forces at work, of course, but she deserves a full well. She deserves to breathe quiet and unburdened. I just have to figure out how to give it to her.

But I honor, and am grateful for, those who stepped in fully present – whether on purpose, or by happy accident. I’m sure it is in no small part of why I am still here.

Longing

February 28, 2025March 7, 2025 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I wish I could have you back, Mom. The little one inside of me wasn’t ready to let go, even though I did let go in my teens. It was different then. I was different then, but this part has remained much the same.

I want you back for myself though. I was always your needy one, but I learned to shut down and stop having needs as best I could.

You did show up for the practical things, and I love you for that. School clothes, pencils, erasers, and a pencil case. A notebook, and a ruler.

I hold onto those things because they were your love, and the most that I got, but I wish I had had more of you.

I wasn’t alone, there were others around, but none of them were you. They focused on their children, and told me to go to bed when they put their children to bed, and then to get up, to go to school, to brush my hair and my teeth. and to do the dishes, or sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Sometimes you were there, and I liked those times the best.

You were so indignant when my best friend’s parents wanted to adopt me because I was there all the time and no one took much notice that I was gone. The commune was dispersed over several towns and houses then, but I lived there, where most of the other children were, and my sisters were, and it was during the school year.

It didn’t bother me that I was on my own a lot because I had my friend, and connection with the other kids there often, but I could stay at my friend’s house whenever I wanted.

I didn’t know that it was unusual that no one knew where I was, and no one was relieved when I came back. Maybe they would have known after a week? I never stayed there that long, but it was my home away from where I lived.

One woman who had a daughter several years younger than me once read me and her daughter a book out on the porch steps on a sunny summer day. She pointed out aspects of the illustrations to us, and laughed at the idea of a cat catching a robber by meowing loudly and waking up the family. The picture showed everyone downstairs when the police got there, and they all had a cup of tea – even the robber.

It’s now that I can voice why that has remained a seminal time and memory for me. I was included, I mattered, and a fun and loving moment was shared with me – on purpose. Her daughter was too young to really appreciate the irony of the tea-drinking robber, but I wasn’t.

My friend’s mom and dad were good and I liked them (more her mom because my friend’s dad intimidated me as he was a tall and stocky man whose presence resembled my violent father). They weren’t my people though, and I never thought of them as surrogate parents.

I knew my mother had abdicated her responsibilities when I was nine, after the divorce from my father, and she had a sort of mental breakdown. I didn’t blame her for that, but she never fully came back to us.

I think I’m mostly experiencing hiraeth – a Welch word that loosely means ‘longing for a home or place one has never known’.

No Time

April 11, 2024April 12, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

My oldest sister and I went to Rhode Island today to meet with my deceased sister’s tax prep guy who seemed like a lovely, caring person.

Our sister had been using his service for 29 years. 29 years! I don’t think I’ve used any kind of service for that long.

He told us that they used to chat while he did her taxes, and she would talk to him about her nursing schooling, and he would tell her about his love of all things Germany – especially Munich and Oktoberfest.

We all got teary-eyed over our departed sister.

Her house sold two days ago, and while her partner bought the house, it’s not the same. She’s gone. It was her house. Many of her things are still in it, but she’s gone.

I can’t conjure her except in memories, and maybe someday they won’t be as sad and depressing.

I can’t sing music we both enjoyed without sadness and sometimes weeping. I can’t talk about things that remind me of her, and there will never be another family beach day that she attends, or time to just spend with her – because no matter how awful she could be to me sometimes – she also just let me be wherever I was most of the time.

I don’t know what happened the last several years, but she became less happy, and less happy meant me not being treated well.

I think part of me understood that she was damaged. She didn’t want to be a jerk, but trying to make me feel bad made her feel slightly better. I understood it as our shared trauma. She learned differently. She would fight and I would flight/freeze. I was the youngest sister and learned to never mistake who was in the one-up position. Having an oldest sister who liked me helped moderate our other sister’s behavior toward me. She wasn’t top dog, but she was more top dog than me.

She told me she wanted to be a better sister. I saw her struggle with her inner world. I watched her change in ways she didn’t like, but the work to be different was a foreign language she couldn’t invest in.

We had a mutual friend from our early teens and they grew closer while they seemed to shut me out.

It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever dealt with. I honestly didn’t understand what happened, but I had to learn to accept it. Another mutual friend told me it was because they lived mostly on the surface and I had the unfortunate bent of wanting more dimension in my friendships. I also remembered the past more vividly than they did, so even if it wasn’t shutting me out, exactly, it was still a shock. I’m still shook thinking about it, but I’m adjusting and adapting, and doing my best to move on.

I guess that’s growing up. Those who I thought were my tribe are not. Maybe they once were, but that was then, this is now – and she’s gone. There’s no more chance at being accepted into the tribe – and why would I want to belong to a tribe that doesn’t want me to belong?

Still, my oldest sister and I, and my deceased sister’s partner, were with her the last days of her life. We did the best we could. She knew we loved her, and she told us she loved us.

It’s not easy to die. It’s not easy to leave a life in the middle of it. I think it’s easier to go quickly with no time to reflect on the fact of life’s end.

But we’re all dying. We’re also living. Living is what this place is for, and one day, sooner than I know, my turn to go will come.

Things Remembered

February 24, 2014February 25, 2014 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

When he was a boy

101 Dalmatian pajamas, 4T. I breathe into the fabric, trying to catch the scent of my little boy, but I forgot that I washed them before packing them away in the box of baby remembrances when he had outgrown them. The box also contained his cloth Madeleine doll, which showed where the scar was from her appendectomy, and the yellow rubber duck received at his baby shower that he had to have at every bath time. I say ‘contained’ because when his sister, my nearly step-daughter, had her first child four years ago, I sent the rubber duck, after sterilizing it, with a letter, saying that I hoped her daughter would like it, and if she remembered how her brother had loved it when he was a baby.

His sister emailed me after she got the package, telling me how sweet that was, and her daughter liked it too. When we went to visit them a few years ago, it was gratifying to see the rubber duck in among the bathtub toy collection.

She mentioned in a post how her daughter was enjoying the Madeleine books, and I knew it was time to send along the Madeleine doll, so beloved by my son at her daughter’s age, along with a little monkey puppet for her latest family addition, who is now a year old, and I haven’t yet met. I got a note the other day telling me they received the package, and her daughter asked if she could keep the doll forever.

It seemed overly sentimental and silly to keep those few things from my son’s childhood, but I have no keepsakes, and no pictures from mine, so it was important to me, and I thought my son would one day appreciate the link back to his youth. He thought it was cool that I had sent his niece the Madeleine doll, and we spoke about how he used to watch the Madeleine cartoon, and have me read the books over and over. Rather than merely keeping useless things that only had meaning to me, the items became an heirloom of sorts, and re-connected my son and I with a happy memory from the past, as well as furthering my son and his sister’s bond, with her children too.

Keeping sentimental things just adds to my pile of stuff, so I’ve done my best to pare down, taking pictures of things before giving them away or recycling them. Having some tactile link to the past is important to me though, so the 101 Dalmatian pajamas will remain in the (now smaller) keepsake box.

Air Waves

January 14, 2013January 15, 2013 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I turn on my hometown radio station almost every morning. I feel comforted hearing the DJ’s voice – a guy who’s been on that station since I was a teenager and the only way to hear the latest songs back then, besides going to see bands, or buying random CD’s to try out, was to listen to the radio.

The station had been family owned since its inception, but was sold, or became managed, by one of the larger market outfits a decade ago, when they tried to make the format more hip by adding a morning talk component with one of the DJs who’s still there, and a guy who did a regular sports spot and was a substitute DJ. The new format was a clumsy intrusion, and didn’t change their listener numbers. The format changed back over to the main DJ within a year, I think. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.

I’m glad the station is still there. I don’t have cable, or get any stations on my television, so I turn to the radio and internet for my news.

This morning I turned on the radio and was transported back to the days of getting my son ready for school, the days before I woke in terrible pain every day, the days that I still wouldn’t trade for today unless I could be a different person. Nostalgia colors the past in pastels so often. But my life was harsh in other ways. I was severely depressed, single parenting, in poverty, and don’t know how I got through, but I’m grateful because now is better, even if still somewhat desolate. Back then I was assured that life would get better, I just didn’t know it would take ten years…

Radio is quaint now with our smart phones, tablets, and other electronic devices streaming music and video, our mp3 players shutting us out from collective experience. I don’t have a smart phone and I don’t think I want one. I think there are going to be a lot of neck problems in a few years, and I know firsthand how youth’s disregard exacts payment later. I asked my doctor what causes our bodies to break down over such a short lifespan and her answer was: “Walking upright”.

The DJ is bidding his listening audience a good day as his shift ends and signals the shrinking time I have left to get out the door myself. I realize that tuning into this station most mornings isn’t an unconscious habit, but part of my ancestral drive for continuity – for being part of a collective, even if the mode seems trivial. It’s this DJ, this radio station, that has barely changed from my youth throughout my adult years. I moved from Maine to California, and finally ended up back where I started, and that station remained mostly as is while much around me has changed, indeed, while I’ve changed too.