I grew up with 3 sisters, all of them older than me. Five years separated me and the oldest. Within the past 3 years, I lost two of them. Now, with just two of us, I have thought a lot about the lives we lived, together and individually.

I started thinking about our lives when I had an opportunity to help my surviving sister realize a dream of visiting Japan. Her best friend from high school has made her life there so the interest is beyond just what the country may offer a visitor. She has wanted to make the trip for many years. Now it seems it will happen.

That got me thinking about my two late sisters. We had often talked about taking a road trip together but as things go, that didn’t happen. And now it will never happen. The dream isn’t erased. Just the possibility.

It made me think about other things that may or may not have been planned, realized or otherwise. We were close throughout our shared childhoods and even to our adult years. On the deepest levels we remained close throughout our lives. And beyond. In the quiet, I can still feel their presence. There is a sense of safety that permeates the air in a way I have not been aware of since childhood.

I do not know what their specific dreams of life were. So I don’t know how close to their dreams they came before death. But in looking back over the years, I can see how our less than perfect childhoods dimmed some of the hope for true happiness or created a willingness to negotiate what happiness looked like.

We experienced what is now called food insecurity. Back then we were just hungry. Being unsure about where the next meal was coming from does multiple layers of damage to young body, mind, and spirit. The stillness where the only real sound is the growling stomach gives rise to yielding morals and fluid values.

I know what being hungry did to me. I know the social rules I broke and the others that I would have been willing to break if I got desperate enough. I also know how that shaped the life I made for myself as a grown up.

But with my late sisters, it is not so clear. From my point of view, they repeatedly sold themselves short, bending to the will of others to safeguard the strides they had made toward whatever goal they had in mind. I can see where bending to someone else’s will detoured them from what appeared to be the original goal. They so often chose what was safe. What held the simplest promise of tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking about that road trip a lot lately. I am not sure I will go but I feel like if I don’t do something along those lines I too have given myself room to negotiate my dream away. I am the master of own universe, not omnipotent, but a holder how I move through it.