Sibling Sonata

Siblings have a life long relationship.  Marriages come and go.  Parents are significantly older, in many cases at least, than their offspring.  So in the end, our siblings are the ones we know the longest.  I am fortunate to have a good relationship with my brother—and the credit goes entirely to him.  He has always maintained good contact with me, and he has been a terrific son to my parents and uncle to my children.  He takes his family relationships seriously and he is good at them.  When we have had to make joint decisions, he has been helpful, fair, even tempered and in good humor.  What more could a sister ask?  

My husband has great siblings as well.  I hope that my children are as lucky as we have been in their future relationships with each other.  They have grown up in a close knit family—part of that is by design.  We are a family that spends time together—both in the local sense, and in the sense that we attend major life events in far flung places, and we enjoy it (no choice not to).  Part of it is bad luck.  One of my sons had a brain tumor and that experience, like any catastrophe in childhood, has consequences.  One of them is that it disrupts childhood in a not very good way—that part causes trauma in ways that are difficult to predict, and may even be overlooked until there is real trouble emanating from them. It is hard to watch and even harder to prevent sometimes.   The upside is that they all went through it together and that made them closer.  Part of the reason I hope for closeness is that they will need each other in the future.  Part is that I hope they will take reasonable care of us when the end is near!