Sisters and Marriage

I just came back from a delightful weekend with my two sisters and my parents. We were all in Toronto to celebrate my youngest sister's marriage earlier this year to a fine fellow. It was interesting to be celebrating the beginning of marriage with her while staying in a hotel room with my other sister, a relatively recent widow. One at the beginning of matrimony, the other's has ended. So we laughed and we cried. It's interesting what marriage does to a person...you are no longer a single entity. You become one with another and things change. People change. And now the older sister is trying to begin a new life without the love of her life and we watch with joy and laughter as the younger sister who has been single for many years learns to share her life. We also watch with amazement, wonder and great thankfulness our parents who have been married 63 years! Imagine, 63 years with the same person! 63 years of deliberately being kind to the same person. 63 years of experiencing life together. My older sister thought that that's what would happen to her. But instead, her husband was taken at age 63. To end my weekend in the big city, we went to see the movie Hope Springs, a fun, explicit movie about marriage. I was glad to hurry home to my hubby after seeing that. And I am thankful that I have a good marriage, my younger sister has started a happy marriage, and I am also thankful that my older sister had a good marriage that we now mourn the end of. And all 3 of us girls look at our parents and are thankful for the model they provide.