A week ago I received a call from a brother that Myrna was in the hospital and not expected to live long, a few days at best. She had had a heart attack and doctors were not able to help her beyond keeping her comfortable. Myrna was my half-sister, my dad’s only daughter by his first wife. She was his firstborn, born in 1934. She didn’t quite make it to her 78th birthday, later this month.
My sister’s death is a strange experience for me, hard for others to understand, hard for me to explain. I am saddened by the loss. Whenever I make a trip to California again, I won’t get to see her. Because we have both trusted Jesus as our Savior, I will get to see her again. This second truth is the more important truth, of course; but it does not eliminate that first truth.
In Dad’s first marriage, he had Myrna and four sons. I’m not really sure how long that marriage lasted – at least long enough to have five children. Dad’s drinking and abusive ways had to have been strong contributors to the demise of that marriage.
My mom was a young single-parent, raising her son without the help of his father. Mom was a very attractive woman. Dad was a handsome man who could be as charming as he was abusive. I doubt Dad was single very long before he and Mom got hitched.
There were already six children between them. I’m sure Dad was not interested in begetting more kids – but he did. Two of us. Me and then my little sister, three years later.
Dad was not a good husband to either of these wives. Neither was he a good dad to any of the seven children who knew him as Dad.
Divorce back in the early ‘40’s was not like it is today. There was considerable shame attached. It was a family secret. Family secrets are sometimes hard to keep with children. So this secret was kept in my family by not providing me information that I might pass along to neighborhood friends.
When we would go visit Dad’s kids or they would visit us, I didn’t know – until I was at least 10 – that they were my siblings. These visits only happened when the oldest two siblings, Myrna and Burel were young married adults. Perhaps we visited them earlier, but I have no memory of that. My guess is that Dad visited them without us present until this point.
When these visits happened, I had no sense that these were my siblings. I don’t know what I thought the relationships were.
Because there was substantial age difference between me and them, I wound up pretty uninvolved. I would just play with my younger sister while the adults visited. I remembered liking Myrna and Burel. I don’t remember much about Myrna’s first husband (the only one I knew). I remember thinking how beautiful Myrna and Burel’s wife were. Well, I was a boy. And I remember arguments that would almost always erupt between my Dad and Burel.
Through my young adult life I had no contact with my half-siblings. We had no effective bonding that drew us to want to connect. That was the way it was for me until 1986, the year our Dad died. In the wake of his passing, Burel reached out to me via mail. He wrote me a lengthy letter, telling me about his life and family and requested that I reciprocate. I did. Then he encouraged me to come for a visit the next time I returned to Indiana. Another brother, Arlis, lived in the area. So we made that happen a year or two after Dad died. Myrna had moved to California as had my sister, Diane.
It is impossible to explain what happened inside me at that time. I found myself drawn to Burel and his family. I wanted to get to know them. We shared blood. We had all been hurt by the same man. Our times together were not about those hurts – it was about discovering gifts, each other.
I have not had the opportunity to build relationship with the two younger brothers. They moved off to other states, too. Myrna and I have corresponded in those years since Dad’s passing. I have kept up with her through Burel and Diane, too.
I talked about my two sisters in California. That is a fascinating story. Both of them moved to San Diego without the other’s knowledge. They went to work at the very same company. One day, my sister saw Myrna’s name on a time card in the rack. She intended to meet the lady, just to tell her that she has a sister by the very same name. Major surprise for both when they did meet!
For the past 40 years or so they have lived in the same area and have had more contact and bonding as a result.
Myrna’s passing has been very hard on Diane. She will naturally feel the loss more intensely than I. Some of what I feel is the sadness for her and for Burel and for Arlis. I know Burel and Arlis must be feeling what I would feel if Diane had died. I would want no one to think that I don’t have my own feelings of loss; I do. They are just mixed in with feeling sympathy for those who feel this loss even more intensely than I.
I look forward to the great family reunion we shall have on the other side.
