Remembering my sister, Doris

I am thinking today of my sister Doris, who would be 86 today, if she were still alive.  She was born in 1929 and died in 2007 during a time in my life that was already rough.  My husband had had a massive heart attack less than a year earlier.  We were in the midst of buying a computer sales and service business in town.  There were also other family members experiencing stress during that time.  When the call came, we were at the business, setting it up, and so there was no time to grieve and no way to gather with other sisters and brothers to talk.  So, I sat down and wrote in my journal random memories of her - no real order, just as they came to mind.  I will share them here as I remember them.  She and I were very close, even though she was child #3 and I was child #9 so there was quite an age difference.  I would have been just 12 years old when she married and she and her new husband moved into our extra living room for the first year, until they and their new daughter moved into a house across the river from us (we could look across and see it but had to take the long way around to visit them, which I did many times during the years that they lived there). So I was a fairly young aunt and spent much time with the family.  They eventually had 5 children and it was a wonderful time for me.  She was a very generous sister and eager to help me in any time of need.  She came to church with me a few times after I was saved in 1955 but never did regularly attend church.  The fellow she married was a few years younger than her but died 6 years before she did. They had a good marriage and she told me regularly to cherish my husband because however long we have will never be long enough to love and be loved by him, and she was so very right!  After my sister Marion died in 1998, Doris hosted a dinner after the memorial service.  Many of us were able to gather and talk about Marion and also about my mom who had died 3 years previous. Most of us kids were too far away and unable to gather for mom's service, so she had been cremated and privately buried.  That experience had been really hard on me, so when we all got together in 1998 it served as a double healing time for us.  Doris and I communicated mostly through e-mail in the last years of her life and I printed most of them out and pasted them in my journals.  It is wonderful to be able to go back from time to time and "spend time" with her in this way.  God gave to me a wonderful heritage and a secure and mostly pleasant childhood.  My sisters all played different parts in this, and Doris will forever hold a special place in my heart.  She sure loved her dog, Dusty, and she also loved her grandkids.    Her son Billy and his wife Sue were so good to her, as were son Bobby and wife Lynn.  Her daughter Nancy remained close, in spite of some rough patches.  Daughter Donna Jean was also close but they had some problems at the end.  Her daughter Sharon was more of a mystery to me since I had moved away while she was growing up.  You can see her in my wedding pictures, however, as my sweet little flower girl.  Most of all, her husband Charlie was her entire life.  She never really learned how to live without him after he died in 2001,  One other thing I remember her saying to me was, "You're lucky your kids are so good to you," because she did not always feel that way about hers.  So, today is a day of remembering for me but the memories are good and I am blessed to have them.