I wonder if anyone can shed light on the impasse that I experience from my immediately younger sister (3 & half years). Because I am mystified and remain upset.
Trying to be brief, she was always our father's favourite which he constantly demonstrated and yes, I was jealous of her. She was also pretty. I was an awkward, shy, anxious and plain child and was no doubt a complete pain. However said sister spent many years 'getting me into trouble' with our parents - for which I would be punished, sometimes quite harshly. She scribbled in all my books and took to school the little teddy bears that I knitted clothes for and lost them.
And more besides over the years.
Cut to some twenty years ago when our father died. She had not seen him for over 10 years - "he can drop dead tomorrow for all I care". I had made a pact with myself that should she ever ask how he was and even where he was living, then I would tell her. She did not ask.
Come the time of his death - by which time he was more in the other world than this one, I plucked up the courage to tell her and our other sister who had not seen our father since she was 14 years of age - over 25 years earlier. I was surprised when the sister who is the subject of this query told me that I should have said that he was ill (he would not have known her). Further more she would not be attending his Funeral as she was moving house that day and it was 'not convenient'. Crematorium and house move possibly 3 miles apart. This all happened many moons ago but please someone tell me why she refuses to have anything to do with me. I have spent years trying to make sense of it all. Some years ago in answering my suggestion that "that was then and this is now" and maybe we should move on, she said that "that's big of you".
Of course our Aunt had told her brother my father that he should leave his little 'nest egg' to me entirely as I had had the responsibility of looking after his welfare for so many years. And I was not to share it. Well, the sisters had been out of the picture for a long time and both of them are the sort that will not discuss anything uncomfortable.
Thing is, this is so old history. This sister lives not 10 miles from me, alone, as do I. No communication whatever - no 70th birthday wishes, five years ago. For her 70th, I sent her some flowers, but no thanks were returned.
It is all so sad. Youngest sister lives in France, my grown up children live a long way away - two are overseas. So she is my geographically my nearest relation.
I meet a group of our maternal cousins from time to time, they all know her and have told me to forget her. But she is my sister and I love her.