No matter how hard you try

You just can't get past your core.

I was always the least favorite child. You try to get past that, but even when you think you have, it slaps you in the face now and then.

I've made it clear that I want to be cremated when I die. At my sister's funeral I realized that the reason I've been so adamant about that is that I don't expect anyone would come. It's a pattern that I just noticed has been repeated throughout my life. My first marriage was in my sister's livingroom on New Year's Eve, because family was going to be there anyway. My second was in the courthouse. When I was very sick and in the hospital, I told people they didn't need to visit me, I was OK. They didn't, but I wasn't. I've always tried so hard to please my family; and they are pleased when I make something special for them. But it's short term. It wears off. It goes away.

I see myself as an unnecessary person.

Yesterday my brother-in-law asked me over to my sister's house to take her knitting supplies. While I was there he asked if there was anything I wanted. I saw 2 plates in the cupboard that I recognized as having belonged to my grandmother and great grandmother. He gave them to me. I was so excited. So I took them over to show my mother and she said, "Oh, no. You can 't have those. They have to go to Merry (my other sister) because she has the rest of the set." So Merry got them.

I don't like the part of me that feels inferior. But I guess it's just something I have to live with. My husband loves me.

Death

My sister died Thursday and the funeral was today.

The morning she died I was looking out my kitchen window at the little stream running thru my backyard. I felt like she had left us and joined the water. The stream was made up of thousands of souls who were traveling down the creek, to the pond, to the river and the ocean. Some of them would evaporate and come back to earth. Some would just luxuriate in being together; rolling over and under in the softness. Clare might giggle as she traveled over the rocks in the stream. It would feel so good. And she would find such peace surrounded by the other souls.

Life had gotten so hard for her. I saw her just before she went to the hospital, she looked and me and said, "I don't know what I'm going to do." She was so worried about being so sick and helpless. I'm not sure she ever acknowledged that she was dying. Maybe she just didn't want to upset anyone else. And none of us talked about it because we didn't upset her.

2009 has not started well. I expect it will get worse.