Life goes on
some notes on loss
My sister, Martha, would be 75 on May 21 2025. She died nearly ten months ago and I have been thinking about her every day since. My sister Pat and I have both experienced moments of “I need to call Martha and tell her about this!” only to have the sad reality of loss bring us back. To this day I ask myself “what would Martha say” or “what would she do” in this or that instance. Through all our decades together she was a wise older sister.
I arrived at her home in Kentville, Nova Scotia the day before she died, so we had a little time to spend together. She was alert and cogent to the end. Her husband and two grown daughters had been tending to her care for a month. There wasn’t much to do except be together and help each other with the transition that was to come.
She wanted to make sure that I took note of the family gallery in her office. She had arranged a series of small photos on the wall between the door and her bookcases. There were eight images: one of her two daughters, one of our dad with his sister in their early teens, one of our mom with her sister also young teens, and two photos from the early 1900s of our maternal grandparents as children with their respective siblings. The other three were enlarged snapshots of my two sisters and me in 1957 at Lake George, in 1972 at my high school graduation and at my niece’s wedding in 2017.
And to the left of all these smaller images hung a larger portrait, this one of Martha, with Pat and me in outline behind her.
Martha had attached to the portrait a small note dated October 2021 which read:
This oil and charcoal sketch by Tom Bostelle (1921-2005) was created as a study for a portrait (Hickman Children, 1967) commissioned by my mother, Janet M. Hickman. The completed portrait itself is, at the time of my writing this note, in my sister Pat’s house in Villanova, PA. Photos of it can be found in the book my brother Stewart made when Mom died (“From the Collection of Janet MacMahon Hickman: An Appreciation,” 2006).
I was 17 at the time of the sketch; Pat was 15, and Stewart was not quite 13. Now at age 71, I deeply appreciate this depiction of us, with myself watched over and surrounded by the presence of my siblings. The imagery captures how I experience the timeless reality of our connection, which is the single longest through-line of my life story, and their continual presence in my consciousness.
I have been contemplating the phrase “continual presence in my conscience” and the possibility that in addition to being on my mind, she continues to be in my mind. Some years ago I read Douglas Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop in which he explored the possibility that a pattern of thought in one person’s brain might conceivably live as a sort of lower-resolution replica in the brain of a loved one; that we somehow are capable of importing the interiority of a person into our self:
“Those whom we love and who love us are the most strongly represented inside us, and our “I” is formed by a complex collusion of all their influences echoing down the many years.”
I think this gets at the connection I experience. It’s difficult to pin down. Three years ago I shared with her a poem I wrote, Two Sisters, inspired by the 1957 photo of the three of us. She responded with her own appreciation of that special link we all have:
We three care for each other in such a complex of long-lived reciprocity, it can seem like our lives’ background music, which makes it all the more lovely to call it out, feel its outlines, and say out loud.
All this to say, I carry some portion of her with me, as I always will. I’d like to think this keeps her alive in some real sense, in accordance with Hofstadter’s view about those we care deeply about: “We live inside such people, and they live inside us.”
As a footnote, we just learned about a new life — Philippa (‘Pippa’) Wicker Osborn —born May 21, 2025 to my niece Libby (my sister Pat’s daughter) and her husband Shef. Congrats.
Life goes on indeed.
Notes:
NPR’s series The Science of Siblings: Exploring the ways our siblings can influence us, from our mental health to our very molecules. https://www.npr.org/series/1241438370/the-science-of-siblings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
Thank you for this, Stew. May her memory be a blessing (I know it will). I love the triple portrait. My mother was a Martha, and so is my only sister. (There aren't many Marthas these days!).
Such sweet connection. I’m sorry you all lost your Martha too early, not that we are ever truly ready. I’m so fond of her Family Gallery. Having long admired homes with walls of family photos (picture those that are hung in stairwells and hallways), I finally created one after my mother died. On seeing it for the first time, one of my brothers remarked, “Wow! You saved SO MUCH.” Indeed.
I feel fortunate to have siblings I enjoy spending time with, though we do it infrequently. Thank you for this lovely reminder of how important these relationships can be, when they work.