Re “The High Cost of Being Different”
In response to several inquiries about my sister and her length of life battle to surmount the art of being different from those around her, she is emerging this week from a debilitating crisis.
Being different, she has said, does not mean being left behind.
She is deeply religious.
Those unshakeable convictions have acted as outsized headlights, undergirded by oxian strength, to steer her through the difficulties that seem to patiently, naggingly, await her whenever she is ready to turn a corner.
We spent the afternoon of Labor Day with a dear friend of the family, a widow of a certain mature age. Gifted with a bold, aggressive personality, we have not thought of her as a solo act in the several years since her husband died of a mercurial disease. Diagnosed on Memorial Day weekend, gone by Labor Day. Lately, our friend, a feisty lawyer, has been dwelling on her painful loneliness.
She spoke of visiting last Friday night with her pregnant daughter, son-in-law and 3-year-old for Shabbat dinner. She spoke of driving across Los Angeles after the meal and opening the door at home to a bleak, dark, empty home.
My mind executed a shortcut to my sister who, because she was born different from others, has come home to hollowness every Friday night of her life.
If our roles were reversed, you would know I had been doomed to Friday Night Dead, not to mention the other six. My sister easily was the most cheerful of the original seven of us. Publicly, nothing can get her down.
The depression of living solitary, I am confident, would have nudged me over the edge of the highway of life decades ago.
Not my sister.
Every morning when I telephone her, regardless of how her personal life is zagging and zigging, she sounds the same, like Mom, imperturbably upbeat. That is her main gift to all of us. Streaming above her as she sails, alone, through life is a message, “We are never given more than we can handle.” My sister, my teacher.
