For My Sister, Miriam Ascher

1950-2023

We expect our parents to precede us in death. But this is not true of siblings. And yet, for my generation this loss is becoming the prevalent one.

Having siblings at all is a primary experience in life. Even the ones we become estranged from. Even the ones we don’t see often, or often enough. These are the only people on the planet who have the exact same family ties as us. The same blood running through us. There is a reason that the family is the basic human social unit.

I was born number three of six daughters. Miriam was number two, six years my senior. She was my first and longest friend and my lifetime protector.

We didn’t see each other often after 1966, but I knew she was always there. We could speak in shorthand common to people who grow up together, and understand each other perfectly.

When she was 13 and I was 7 she was put in the position of mothering all four of the younger sisters, or “littles” as we were collectively referred to. My mother had a breakdown and Miriam did her best. It was a lot to ask when she was a child herself. The same situation was repeated in 1967. As the wheels came off the cart she did her best to keep it upright.

She mothered us in other ways too.

One day my younger sisters and I were playing in the Susquehanna River and my sister Eve dropped a board with a nail in it on my foot. It slipped out of her hands. The nail, which was slimy and rusty, went in an inch. And left a nasty puncture wound.

Our mother had recently told us the story of when she was seven and received a pocket knife for her birthday. She cut herself with a pocket knife and kept it secret so she could keep the knife.

I was trying to do the same. Not one of the "real" grownups noticed my limp. But Miriam did. And correctly diagnosed it. And made me get a tetanus shot.

I was her shadow in those days.

Binghamton NY, 1963: Sitting in the bathroom watching her get ready to go out. I sit on the lid-down toilet as she does her hair. Motown blasting on the transistor radio. Martha and the Vandellas belting out “Heat Wave and Aretha with Try a Little Tenderness. Music that made my foot want to tap.

She is built like a brick house, a fact that I was awed by, but did her no favors as it attracted rotten men.

Miriam’s hair was exactly the color of terra cotta tiles and there was a ton of it. Long and thick like a mane. First, the wash. Not in the kid’s shampoo that came in crème form and had a smell I will never forget though I can’t really put my finger on it. But real grownup shampoo. Then conditioner.

Next came the gel and curlers. Then a dryer. Finally the taking out of the curlers, the aqua net and the brush out. Big hair was in and none of the girls had bigger hair than my big sister.

Make up was next. Applied with the precision of a pharmacist making up a custom nostrum. Eyes, smoky. The eyebrows and eye lashes coated with mascara and brushed out to perfection. Her eyes are brown, or were then, but she had the pink eyebrows common to the true redhead. And that took work to correct. Then the lipstick, just so.

At last it was time for the outfit. Tight top. Tight jeans. Boots. And out the door she went. To places which remained a mystery to me. It would be very late when she got home and I would be asleep. At least I was supposed to be.

After the 1960s she gave up on all the make up and was never a clothes horse. She had some jewelry she loved, and owned a bead store for a number of years. Later she had a necklace of moonstone beads that literally glowed. But I think she loved it more for its mystical properties than anything else. Miriam was the least vain person I have ever known.

I went to see her in 2015. Her house faced a string of mountains that rise above the Flathead Valley and was sprawling and comfortable. Two large wolf-husky mix dogs lay about. The birds in the aviary sang and chirped. The furniture was sparse but comfortable. They largest philodendron I have ever seen crept across the wall at ceiling height along with a green explosion of every type of plant that can grow indoors.

There was a large table in what would have been a living room if it had been someone else’s house. It was completely obscured by containers of beads, baskets of fabric, and little jars of essential oil for perfumery. Every bit of wall space was ablaze with art, mostly depictions of the natural world. It was a home in perfect harmony with its sole human resident.

She never stopped protecting me. The last time I saw her was in 2017. I was having some issues in my business and she came down for a week, not to “fix” it, just to back me up. She believed I could fix things myself. Which is one of the best things you can give another person.

She was also an unfailing cheerleader. I have been slowly building a writing career for the last ten years. She shared and reposted everything I wrote, with a note explaining that it was from her sister. I knew she was proud and that made me proud.

She was the first of us to go to California. Berkeley in 1969. Not the school, the town, which was in turmoil. I followed in 1972. I had hitched a ride with a bunch called the earth people. Once I slept off the fatigue of the journey I set out to find her. And I did. Five doors up from where I landed in town.

Her connection to other life forms was deep and abiding. Especially plants. She worked as a horticulturalist and landscape artist for 40 years. In 1981 she moved to Kalispell where she spent the rest of her days. A place with a growing season of 3 months. Somehow she made it work.

The commitment to other species wasn’t just talk. When we were in Binghamton, a stupid man was tormenting a lion at the Ross zoo. The stupid man was mauled to death and subsequently both the lion and his mate were executed. She was enraged by this, and so was I. It was our shorthand for injustice against nonhumans for the next 60 years.

Until just shortly before her death she had a rescue pig and an aviary full of rescue birds. All well loved.

She practiced the martial arts all her adult life. For her it was not just about the physicality, though she mastered that. She was after the spiritual practice and the focus. She mastered that too.

Whenever she would come back to California she wanted to go directly to the ocean. Not to shout and run on the beach, but to sit in the silence and become part it. Just waves, sand, and sunlight. She could be utterly still.

She didn’t have an advanced degree and didn’t need one. She had one of the finest minds I have known and a keen intellect. This was mainly applied to the world’s social problems. She was not someone you wanted to try to fool, and she did not suffer fools gladly.

We shared a great sadness at the state of the world. Especially the continuing ecocide. She was more certain that humans should go extinct. That we have proven ourselves unfit to be in control of what happens here. I was more generous to our species. Since I don’t see these next years as promising either way, at least she will be spared what is coming. I will keep up the fight as long as I live and never give up. She knew that.

Many of us, when we lose someone to death, speak of never hearing their voice again. Of course this is true of the physical voice.

But we can remember that voice in our minds. Very accurately.

It is more like never hearing what they have to say about anything new. I have an internalized perception of Miriam strong enough to know exactly what she would say about most things.

But not everything. A living Miriam could always, conceivably, surprise me. The dead never surprise us. And I will miss her living voice for the rest of my days.

72 is not young, but neither is it particularly old. And the women on both sides of my family are long lived. I wanted to know her as a true elder, at 80 or 90. We have both been robbed of that.

She did not fear death. Because she had a vision for what comes after. She was more spiritual than I am. My agnosticism prevents me from an opinion on the great mystery.

Today I hope she was right. Perhaps what happens is whatever you believe will happen. In which case, she is whizzing around the universe, free of the pain of this last year.

Two nights after her death I had a dream. We were standing on the shore of a large lake. A summer day. Sunlight on the rippling water. Standing together in silence.

And then she became part of the water and the light. Maybe that is it. We dissolve into infinity.

We know that love outlasts death. We don’t need to be instructed on that point. We feel it with every fiber of our beings. Love hold everything together as surely as atoms hold the material world. In the end love is all there is.

Fare thee well my sister. And may you be in your own heaven, just as you believed it would be.