“We are family…I’ve got all my sisters with me,” sings Donna.

Joy springs from my sister and I can’t help but smile, in spite of myself, each and every time she sings the words from a song.

The girl inside of me is happy.

Sisters, sisters, sisters.  Mom once told me that I was the sister that she never had.  At the time, I couldn’t figure her out because she had five sisters and why on earth would she need one more?  I know that I did a lot for her, that she felt that she could rely on me, perhaps even looked up to me, like one does to a big sister.  I guess Mom never had a sister like me or she was mixed up in her definition of a sister.  At the time of that conversation, I felt frustrated, mostly because I was still searching for the mother that I never had – the mother that I could depend on and that would guide me through life.  That was supposed to be Mom’s job.  My job was not to be her big sister, but her daughter.

“Sweetheart…be happy,” said Aunt DeeDee, my 88 year old aunt, in a recent phone conversation.

My mother’s sister, my Aunt DeeDee, is the last of Mom’s immediate family, the last weathered, disappearing cord of connection.  The sound of her voice takes me right back to childhood days, with the words “honey,” and “sweetheart” mixed in with happiness, joy, love.  The feeling of being truly loved just for being me.  Her words achingly fill my heart with happiness.  It hurts to be reminded to be happy.  Can happiness truly ache?

“Smile, Jeanne,” said Mom whenever she saw me looking down.  It hurt to be reminded to smile, when everything I carried, deep inside, just hurt, hurt, hurt.

“Don’t fight, Jeanne.  Always be friends with your sisters.  That way, you’ll be friends with them when you’re old,” said Mom, as I rolled my teenage eyes heavenward and sighed over her old-fashioned advice.

Sisters, sisters, sisters.  Today, I believe that my sisters are everywhere.  All women are my sisters.  Biological sisters, sisters-in-laws, daughter, aunts, cousins, friends of today and long ago, the women that I meet in a thrift store, ones I worked with, went to school with, the cashiers at the grocery store, women in a book club, writers’ group, the women artists and authors of the artwork I view and the books I read, even though I’ll never meet half of them, and even mothers.  Mom looked for a sister in me.  I look for a sister in all women.  All of them are my sisters.

Throughout my life, up until this year, more than three years since Mom died, I worried about my biological sisters.

I don’t worry about Donna, my older sister, anymore, because she has proved that she can take care of herself.  She is an independent woman.

I don’t worry about Barbara, my younger sister, anymore.  She never had to prove that she could take care of herself.  My worry was that she lost track of art, actually, she never found art.   However, in the past few years she has discovered that art yields so much to the inner girl.  She has finally gotten it – all answers to life are in art, much of it created by artist sisters.

I don’t worry about Maria, my baby sister, anymore.  She has proved that she can take care of herself, too, and she has never lost track of art.  Alas, I’m afraid, she learned a detrimental skill from me – putting others’ needs ahead of one’s own.  However, she has recently crushed this skill, destroying it to wits’ end, tearing away the crying tears, and has stopped putting others ahead of herself.

If I go to meet my dear, sweet Jesus tomorrow,  I know it will be okay for me to leave my beautiful sisters on our beautiful earth as I go to my beautiful Lord in heaven.