I have just finished sitting the shiva mourning period for my beloved sister Roberta, whom we always called Bobbie.
I have often wondered why so many poems are written for lovers, even faithless ones, but so few for others who have enriched our lives. Our most endearing relationships may be with friends and family who have always been there for us to offer warmth and affection when we are cold or in despair.
Such a one was my sister Bobbie. She was seven years my senior. Because my mother was not young when I, her fifth child, was born, Bobbie appointed herself my guardian and caregiver. Most older sisters would have considered me a nuisance, but she included me in everything, coming down to my level when I could not reach hers.
As children, we lived in Melbourne. Before Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, there was an epidemic in our city of infantile paralysis, with many children having to be put in an iron lung to survive. As a result, the schools were closed for three months, and all communal activities that involved crowds were banned. The beach, the movie theater, the skating rink were all out of bounds, and children had to rely on their own resources. At the time, I was eight and my sister 15.
What could have been a frustrating and boring period for a child was made magic for me by Bobbie’s inventiveness. We had an old grapevine covering our somewhat ramshackle fence, and so we had caterpillar hunts. They were eating all the leaves of the grapevine, so our gardener dad was delighted with this game. We’d collect the caterpillars in a glass jar and see who could find the most. Then we would take them to a nearby place where bluebells grew and release them.
A GAME of which I never tired was acting out books I was reading. My favorite then was Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I always took the part of Amy because I admired her golden curls and blue eyes, and she was the one who captured boys’ hearts, while Bobbie opted to be the tomboy Jo. We played variations on this every day, and I loved it.
Then, a few years later, Bobbie got her first job. She had a minuscule salary and our family was quite poor, but every time she received her wages, she gave half to my mother, and from the small amount left, there was always a gift for me. Once it was a pretty pair of shoes made of different colored strands of leather, plaited across the toes.
There were wonderful books – all the Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin stories of A. A. Milne; and a whole series about that naughty schoolboy “Just William.” As I grew older, she taught me to love poetry and bought me a beautiful anthology bound in blue and gold that I still have today.
Growing up
OUR LIVES went in different directions at times. She joined the Australian Women’s Army Service during World War II and was sent thousands of miles away to Queensland. When I was 19, I went to London to work and study for several years. But we always wrote to each other, and she was the one to whom I could always pour out my feelings – about a broken romance, exciting plans, or anything at all that was happening in my life.
As with everyone, there were traumatic times when I was in despair. Bobbie was always there for me, and once crossed oceans to help me through a particularly bad time.
For decades we lived in different countries; she lived in Australia, while my home is in Jerusalem. When I had my 70th birthday, my wonderful sister traveled across the world to visit me, and then took me on a cruise around the Greek islands. It was my most magical holiday ever.
We never stopped reminiscing about our youth, people we have loved and lost, and lessons learned along the way. Once we spent a beautiful day together at the Dead Sea. Another time, we met in Paris and took a boat trip along the Seine, and walked together through Giverny – the home of Monet, marveling at the ponds covered with lotuses.
She wrote beautiful poems but never realized how meaningful they were to me. She had many losses in her life: her beloved daughter; two husbands – the second one lived only three years after their marriage, but she told me they were the happiest years of her life. I have been going through all of her poems that I have collected over the years.
Coincidentally, the one most meaningful to me at this time is titled “An Epitaph”:
Bury me where the winds blow free And daisies grow, Far below, the raging seaTimeless, endless, crashing on rocks Infinity.
Lower than the angels Will I lieThis place I chooseWhen I die.
You may come but do not weep’Tis but a dreamA final sleep.
Birds still fly overhead The last chapter has not been read.There are children yet unbornBelieving in a unicorn. Beloved come, and come aloneAnd when you leavePlace a stone.
The writer is the author of 14 books. Contact her at: dwaysman@gmail.com