Gratitude Monday: wherever and however

This is my older sister’s dining table.

For the past week, it’s where I’ve been working, in her house in Sedona, in between visits to her at her assisted living facility, chats with my younger sister and discussions with the friends who are looking after her.

We don’t have a settled diagnosis—her friends are ferrying her down to Phoenix for tests, scans, audiology exams and whatnot—but sometime last summer she became unable to do things most of us take for granted. Cooking, taking medications, walking her dog; it all got muddled in her brain, and her health took a precipitous nosedive. I found out about it all by accident in September and have been at anxiety DEFCON 3 ever since. She can’t use a computer, which has become my primary mode of communication, so I’ve been getting snippets of information every once in a while, which doesn’t help.

So I flew out last Sunday and have had a couple of debriefs from the people who manage her medical care and finances. I’ve also visited her every day (except for Thursday, when she called to blow me off in favor of an activity her facility was holding; when she told me what the activity was—giving people water pistols filled with different colors of paint and letting them squirt the sheet-covered activities director—I conceded that that was way more fun than anything I could have come up with).

Here’s the TL;DR: she’s in exactly the place she should be. She’s safe, comfortable, well-looked after, with her dog, well-fed (except for, I understand, the cheese blintz that one time; and the biscuits and gravy). She has activities she enjoys and has become a bingo fiend. She’s made a raft of friends in her fellow residents. When you take her to lunch she can pack away a hamburger and top it with lemon meringue pie. Most of all: she’s happy.

The essence of her is still there, although more tentative than she was. And that hurts me. But she has spent her entire life making lemonade out of lemons, and this is no different. This is her gift—to be happy wherever and however.

Back to the table. As I worked at it this past week, I thought about all the meals she and I have cooked and served at it. And all the meals she made and served to friends in two states on it. I also thought about all the glasses of wine we’ve swilled while talking about this and that, at that table. Thanksgivings and Christmases. This table carries a lot of wonderful memories; which sometimes come back to her, but are unlikely to ever leave me.

As I spend today flying back to the District They Call Columbia, I’m grateful for all my memories of my sister. And for the people in Sedona who have become her family and are looking after her. This is everything.