I’ve been telling stories all my life – newspapers, books, blog, photos – but I couldn’t begin to tell the story of my sister and me. I just couldn’t bear it.

We grew up together in a hellish place, and we were very close, we leaned on one another, talked to one another, held one another through some truly dreadful years.

We both suffered from some severe emotional and psychological issues, from incest to abuse to severe collapses.

I don’t need to say any more about that here, it gives me the chills just to think about it, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

Jane and I have always loved one another, but we have not always known how to talk to each other or accept one another, and we lost contact for very long periods of time. I never stopped worrying about her, but it took me a long while to get over the fact that I could never really help her, and then I  had trouble understanding her as a person who didn’t want help from me, she wanted her little brother back.

I always wanted to save her, but I forgot to know her, or let her know me. Neither of us could ever get comfortable, too much heavy water under the bridge.

We always managed to stay in touch, but it was often tense and painful for both of us. She moved to upstate New York soon after I did, and also had a farm with animals; she bought a house hundreds of miles away.

I’ve been to see her once or twice; she had never come to see me except when I married Maria, she showed up for the ceremony and then left quickly.

Apart from everything else, she hates to leave her dogs alone for long. It is quite ironic that we both ran to the country that dogs are an essential part of both of our lives.

Like me, Jane has worked all of her life to heal her wounds and move forward and do some good. She had some dark times, and while we always cared for one another, we couldn’t quite find a way to talk comfortably.

When I broke down eight or nine years ago and was alone, she appeared out of the mist and walked me through my darkness, she talked to me on the phone every night or as often as I needed for months and months when I was desperate. She knew exactly what was happening to me; it had happened to her.

Nobody else could see it.

I do not believe I would have survived without her, and then when Maria came into my life, she receded again, and our connection was sporadic.

We know each other as no one else will ever understand either of us, we each were present and saw what happened to the other, that is a bond that could never be broken, and our love for each other has never faltered. But it was never ordinary either.

Now, at 74, she decided to take a job in a supermarket chain as a cashier because she wants to be helpful and useful during this crisis. She always wants to do some good; I think it is healing for her, as it is for me.

She is at risk, of course, more than 40 grocery chain workers have died of the coronavirus, but it is patronizing for me to worry about her, she is my big sister, and she has been through a lot worse. She can take care of herself.

I’m not sure which one of us has changed more in recent years, but somehow the coronavirus has brought us back to the place of love and connection where we both started.

She lives alone, in a house with her six dogs, in a place that makes our farm seem like Manhattan. She likes it that way; she has some friends she holds dear and doesn’t want or need more.

We each are the last connection we have to any members of our family, and it is important to me that we keep it. And we alone know our stories and can testify to them. We often ask each other if what happened could have happened.

Sometimes we don’t believe it ourselves, we are witness to one another, we are each other’s reality. My sister is brave and smart, she deserved so much better than she got. But she is happy in her life, doing what she wants, living as she wants, still doing the work she needs and wants to do to be whole.

She is never content to rest or sit on any laurels

Suddenly, the walls have come down, and we laugh and remember and yak like the loving brother and sister that we once were to each other. When she freaks out over the craziness of a supermarket in the Spring of 2020, she calls me, and I call her back.

There is no tension, no awkwardness, no resentment or discomfort. I can help her when she asks, but that is not what our relationship is about.

Somehow, the virus has brought us back in time, where we sat up talking and listening while my parents tore each other apart downstairs. She is sensitive, like Maria, all the anger and tension went right through her.

We could, of course, hear everything. We ran away together a dozen times when we were small, but we never got farther than my grandmother’s house, five or six miles away.

I fought hard for much of those early years to get help for Jane, but it turned out she was able to help herself, it just was a long and hard road. It took me a while to come to see her true self.

I accept her strength and judgment, I am not her mother or father, and she has come to accept me also as the person I am and have worked hard to be.

So we just talk. It feels wonderful to be able to do that. We are so different yet so much alike.

Slowly, day by day, my love for my sister is seeping back, not all at once, but one talk at a time. I think we are both a little wary, but getting past it.

I look forward to talking to her. We laugh and joke with one another. Yesterday, she texted me and said she needed a favor. We are coming to trust each other again, in the way a brother and sister should.

I texted right back and said I knew what it was; she wanted Maria to make her a special mask for her to wear at the supermarket. She said that was right, she wanted a beautiful one,  striking enough that people would ask where she got it, and she could answer “my sister-in-law made this for me, she is an artist!”

I wanted to cry, but I laughed.

“You won’t believe this,” I said, but I just asked Maria if she would make a beautiful mask for me, one that would get people to ask about it so I could say ‘my wife is an artist.’ She made this mask for me.”

Maria said she would be happy to make masks for both of us on Monday.