Sisters Strong, and the Travel Day That Wasn't

I come from a big family, and I will be the first to admit that this has been an amazingly difficult year for us. My parents died within seven hours of each other, my brother-in-law died, my sister-in-law died. It has been a year of overwhelming losses.

My sister Marilyn's husband Denny passed in springtime, and I wrote about his funeral on these pages. Shortly after that, Marilyn went into assisted living in Danville, which is a ways from where I live. 

At the end of July, their estate, including cars and belongings, were sold, as well as the home that I lived in with them when I was a pizza girl at Knoebels in the summer of 1984. So there have been some big changes.

I've been trying to mount a trip to see Marilyn for a while now. We almost went in late November, but that didn't work out. We also made plans to travel to see her on this day, but we awoke to snow, and reports of terrible traffic snarls in the area we would have been heading to.

So we cancelled our travel plans for this day. We are going to aim for Saturday instead. It's to be warmer and milder, with no chance of snow or anything else awful. So we are hopeful it will all work out. But it's December, so hey. . . . with any travel plans, you're taking chances and hoping for the best.

In advance of our travel, I decided I wanted to do something fun for us sisters, so I made us friendship bracelets. I had picked up two little bags of colorful alphabet letters at Walmart a few months ago. NOW I know what I bought them for!

I used the letters to assemble some bracelets for us, and believe me, it took some doing, as I ran out of I's and E's rather quickly! My imagination and my alphabet set allowed the bracelets that you may see above. (The fact that I ran out of I's means that sisters on MY bracelet is spelled with a HEART!)

I Love You To the Moon and Back was a thing that big sister Barb - now walking barefoot in Heaven with Jesus - always said (see here and here). So she's represented here too; Barb rides with us still.

Overall, the message is this: Sisters are STRONG! Sisters will GET THROUGH ALL OF THIS. And we will do it TOGETHER!

My soundtrack song is the Eurythmics with Aretha Franklin, singing Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves.