Unknown Sister

That Little Voice

I’d never seen her cry, and I had known her all my 30+ years.

She was clinging to a woman I barely recognized as she let years of feelings spill onto her comforter’s dress.

I stood apart from the gathering, watching in surprise as my private older sister exposed her grief openly and publicly.

The funeral service had just ended for my 103-year-old grandmother. The small cluster of attendees consisting of older church members and her surviving children and grandchildren, stood outside the small church shaking hands and reminiscing. Karen was the only one expressing grief with endless tears.

She had been grandmother’s favorite: the first child of the matriarch’s last child. Their bond was established at birth and remained unspoken but cemented through distance and time.

My shock at Karen’s outburst continues to fill me with questions. Not so much of why she was weeping, but at my realization I didn’t know Karen could cry, or would cry, or wanted to cry.

Where had those tears been hiding all these years? Why had I never seen her sobbing? Or why had I not remembered it? I was alert to her anger. I laughed at her humor. I longed for her approval. But I never saw her vulnerability.

Did she hide them from me, not wanting me to know she could be pierced? Or was the pedestal I placed her on so high I didn’t see her soft spots?

Others must have recognized her protected veneer. They must have known her quick wit covered strands of defenselessness and helplessness.

What had we missed in not sharing those moments? What relationship did we not have because our true selves were cloaked in secrecy?

We will never know. The time has passed. That incident 50 years ago remains the only glimpse of seeing my sister’s softness and susceptibility. We didn’t share pain or frustration. We skipped the making up after a fight.

We lived side by side in quiet hostility, unspoken and covered with forced tolerance. Our relationship was laced with her resentment, intimidation, and antagonism, and my eagerness to please, my hunger for her nod of acceptance, my fear of her rejection.

I felt her ridicule. I endured her anger. I owned her dismissal. I ran from her childish cruelty that was deemed ‘cute’ rather than harmful or hurtful. She covered her sensibilities with humor, often at my expense.

I saw only her toughness, her power, her dominance and control, her authority, her supremacy, her creativity. And I revered her.

I missed her tenderness, her understanding, her empathy, her acceptance and her approval. Too bad for both of us.

Perhaps if I had seen more tears we would not have been estranged.