A Candlestick: Memory

Today my sister would have been 75 years old! She's been gone now for 6 months. Seems impossible to fathom. As of all things of importance in mortality...sometimes it seems like it happened yesterday...then it seems like it was years and years ago...then the mind game of did this really happen? Is she really gone?

Out of sight but not out of mind. At this time she would be looking at the new cookbook I would have sent to her. Calling me up and reading me recipes...asking me to be sure and copy it down as she just knew I would want to make it...even though she herself had never done so!

She would be calling me multiple times and telling me to hurry! change the channel to QVC/HSN because such and such is on and she has her family on the Christmas show. Or she'd be telling me what I needed to buy. Mostly jewelry. She had exquisite taste and class and especially in jewelry.

I think she was born loving glitz and glam. No teen was happier with the advent of rhinestones although all of us were enamored, she was over the top. She loved doing hair and could do her hair in the most professional French roll ever!

She loved to shop and bought bargains in bulk and then usually gave them away . She'd buy multiples because the prices were so low that she couldn't pass it up. She would wear me out calling and telling me what I needed to go buy. She got 100% of the shopping gene and I was left with zip!

She was beautiful and she liked to look beautiful. She told me once as her health took a steep decline...I don't look sick as I make sure I have my make-up on. Without it...I look real bad. She wore make-up from her teen years right up to her leaving. She had so many oxygen bottles, obviously she was on the wane and yet, if the young man was delivering oxygen, she would check and make sure she didn't look sick. Towards the end of her life...she would sometimes doze off while applying her lipstick and have a red line jutting out towards her cheek. She liked to use her lipstick as rouge also and towards the end, there were times she looked like she had red circles.

She found a black pullover robe with silver sparkles on the neck and she wore that a lot. She wanted to look lovely. to look her very best. And she certainly did.

She was so incredibly bossy and could drive me nuts with her insistence of driving her point home. I believe that the good we see in others, and the not so good, that grabs our attention, is but a mere reflection of us! It pained me to think I was bossy also!! Yet in my own way of being bossy...it is true. I try to catch myself. There are many ways to be a BossyFace!

Before she died she wrote letters to everyone. I read mine this morning and also Terry's. So tender and loving. Lipstick kisses all over. She and I both love lipstick. Last night I thought of her when I saw 2 of my Laurels that are home from their first semester of college. both wearing make-up and deep dark luscious lipstick! Looking glamourous! She and I used to really talk about the absolutely no make-up look and it's blandness. She couldn't believe they wouldn't want to do something! She more than I, as I'm happy with a swipe of brightness on my lips and mascara on lashes...she wanted full make-up on all women. She practiced what she preached in that arena. I'm trying to do better.

She would love the happenings of today of modesty in clothing and full make-up and people all excited about lip color. She, like I, would not understand why you would want to go through a lengthy process of several steps to get lipstick that stays put. We loved the carrying of our lipstick tubes and checking ourselves in our little primp mirrors attached to the lipstick holder and putting lipstick on. If we went someplace to eat or just being out, we'd excuse ourselves...and go to bathroom to primp. It was such a fun time! I love, and I know she would too, seeing YW having fun with make-up and beautiful, modest, feminine clothes. The soloist at the Christmas party last night was an update from those years past. I would have called Dixie today and told her all about her dress and her scarf and her make-up and how reminiscent I felt.

I will stop writing as I could go on and on. Maybe I'll post more tomorrow and find some early pictures to share. I will be forever thankful for the one sibling that I had and that we remained true friends. I miss her today more than you can imagine.