Forgiveness Day

To err is human; to forgive, divine.~ Alexander Pope

I was out picking blackberries, both wild and my thornless.  Marveling at the size difference reminded me that the last real conversation I had with my sister was about that very thing.

This was right after my mother died and before we realized what an malicious domineering b*tch she was.  I was asking for the canning supplies and when I went to go into my mother’s home to retrieve the squeezo I found all the locks had been changed.  She inherited the house but everything else was to be split.  She and her boyfriend of three months went through all of my mother’s things together instead of us all sitting down as a family.  My brother and I got the scraps.  We had to get a lawyer involved  just to get copies of family recipes!!!!  We never saw the inside of my mother’s house again while she owned it.

Ironically after picking berries I came in and read that tomorrow is Forgiveness Day.  Can I forgive her cruelty?  I started remembering going through photos with my brother and making copies so we would each have certain pictures. 

Oddly I had always thought of myself as the black sheep in the family, the inevitable angst of the middle child. 

While looking through the pictures my brother and I  noticed that my sister was never part of them unless  it was a staged photo.  In most candid shots it is the family together and she sits in the background reading a book. 

My memories really don’t include her except when she smacked me so hard she left a welt of her hand print on my back.  I don’t remember laughing with her or going places with her as a kid.  She was seven years older, always thought of herself as my mother.  She left for college when I was ten.  She moved back home three months before mom died.  I was extremely happy and hoped for the adult sister relationship.  Quickly I realized we were but a stepping stone place to stay to get out of the old relationship and start the new one.

As soon as she could she sold my mother’s house  and was gone.  The woman who bought it is a fantastic neighbor.  My oldest son went to school with her oldest son and my younger son played football with her younger son.  The kids are free to play in the fields again, something that my sister denied them.  The house had beautiful new siding and windows installed, the inside had a complete make over and no longer looks like the same place which actually makes it easier to be in there.  My mother would have loved  the changes.

So will I be forgiving her tomorrow?  No, I will leave that up to God to do as he is a much better person than I.  Forgiving her won’t erase the unnecessary pain she caused.  Do I miss her in my life? I don’t know where she is or even if she is still alive.  But no I don’t miss her because she was never really a part of it.  For all intents and purposes my life has become better with her out of it.  My children are free to roam what use to be their grandmothers property without being yelled at.   The neighbor has given us back items that she left there that we had given our mother.  I am quite at peace with the way things are.