Oh Sister

I am visiting my ailing sister tomorrow. I have mentioned her before. I may also have mentioned I have five sisters. Anyway, this sister was the reason for the reunion a number of months ago and I now gather from my eldest sister - a former doctor who worked for many years on the world's poorest continent - that this particular sister's health has taken a sudden downturn. She isn't well at all now and it seems death is trying hard to stalk us again as a family. Just as it did when our parents died prematurely, in my case before puberty. Sometimes when I am relaxing on a train, or staring out the window of a plane, I wish I knew more about my parents. I wish for example that they had left some kind of articulation of their being, especially my mother who for many months knew she was dying. This regret is perhaps one of the reasons I am glad of the opportunity in this blog to express feelings not only for the artist and her art but for family life too, and indeed for life - and in this instance death - itself. My ailing sister is probably too discreet to say much at all of any personal note about her predicament except with those closest to her. I can say a few things. For all of her working life she looked after others. Now she is a recipient. No one can quite stamp out the merciless march of cancer when it gets going I gather. I was going to say it is like the largest army in the world marching into a tiny country. But there is a fairly recent precedent of the tiny country winning. (Only to have another illness?) Can this really be a good omen? All I know is that with any luck I shall catch my train tomorrow and stare out the window and think not only of my parents but of my ailing sister's unailing dignity. Because of the fragmentation, the shattering almost, of family unity when our parents died, I never got to know my sisters - all older - well at all. But our love is indivisible, in sickness and in health. I am proud of this fact.