If you live with a builder-creator sort of person, as I do, certain terminology gets lodged into household parlance.  You talk about things in increments of 32nd of an inch.  'Shim' means something to you; it's not a pronoun, it's in your junk drawer next to a chisel, lag bolt, and router bit. Lots of broken pencils; no pens though.  

 

So the other day we were talking about joists...I suppose that is my due since I made him talk about hemorrhages and placentas for 13 years.  However, on this day, a new term made its way into the conversation: sistering.  Sistering means "to affix a beam or other structural member to another as a supplementary support."  To be sistered is to be lashed together to gain structural support.  

 

Not everyone gets to be sistered in life.  I enjoy abundance in many areas of my life, and having sisters is definitely one of them.  I have my blood sister (holding my son in the picture above) and my found sisters (the pics below).  I have weathered storms and high seas lashed together and sistered to these people.  They have been my structure, my support, my beams, my enclosure.  

 

This week brings this Month of Rembrance to a close.  It ends with the day, two years ago today, that we lost a sister and part of my structure and enclosure buckled.  In these last hours and days I have been remembering where we were, what we were doing, and hoping that all the best and right things were said before she left us.  Already, some of it feels hazy.  

 

What stands out from the haze is that my own structure has might and integrity, my enclosure is warm and solid.   That in those months and days before she left, we had already lashed together to secure the space she was leaving.  To form not just an enclosure, but a fortress, around her.  We had already sistered one another; our structure withstood the storm, held us in the calm thereafter, and is here to stay.  

 

My foundation and underlayment has nearly everything to do with my parents and the life they gifted to me.  The endurance of my enclosure, the fortress for my heart, is gifted to me by my sisters.  Thank you.