I am the youngest of 4 sisters. I have never know life without them. Not one day has been spent without that awareness. My fondness memories of childhood are very much connected to who they were, and still are, to me.

Last November, we lost one of us. Not really lost. We know where she is. We just can”t see her with our eyes. I see her, hear her, feel her with my heart. She is often nearby. Not always, though. I guess she gets called upon by others, as well.

Just the other day, I saw a picture of out great-niece. She lives hours away so I don’t see her regularly. She is quite grown now. I sent a message to her mother, my niece, remarking on the picture I saw of her daughter. As I was typing the message, I distinctly heard my late sister say, “Tell her that for me, too.”

We all have grown into old age. As the youngest, I was last to reach retirement age, but here I am. So my sisters are old women now. As was the sister who passed. But when I experience her presence, the old woman is not who is here with me. It is the little girl. The young versions of us before life dealt us some devastating body blows. The little girls the shared the toilet seat, that bathed together, that laughed and played with the abandon of innocence.

Life took a dark turn for our family and we all reacted to that turn in our own ways. We all found our own paths through the darkness. None of us emerged unscathed. Our connections to each other became strained, but never snapped. I could, and did, depend on them to be who they were. And even though who they were changed within themselves, they would always be who they were to me.

We forged our relationships on the purity of our hearts. The reality of us was one created before we knew the harsh reality of dishonesty and betrayal. Our combined heart came out of a love that just was as it had always been, from the beginning of time to the end of time.

I see the grown women my sisters have become. I look in their eyes and can see the paths they have taken through life. I watch them move their bodies and see the weight of all they experienced on the shoulders. But mostly I see the little girls we were. I see them as the light that would greet me in the morning and the calm that would quiet the night.