Dear Prudence,
I was never close to my sister Claudia. She was only a year older than me, and I think because of that everyone expected us to be best friends and do everything together. Without that expectation, maybe we’d have gotten on better, but instead, we just pushed against it.
If she liked pink, I liked black. When she took up the piano, I went for the soccer team instead. She was my family and I loved her, in that way you love a cousin who you don’t know well. We saw each other a couple of times once we’d left home, but we just had nothing in common. Then six months ago she died. She’d had a heart condition most of her life, but it was still quite sudden in the end.
The thing I don’t know is how I feel about it. I mean, I don’t know if I’m sad. On a day-to-day basis, I don’t really miss her. Why would I? Even when we lived together we rarely saw each other every day. Yet, at the same time, I’ll sometimes just be gutted by the sudden thought that I used to be a sister and now I’m not. That I’ll never be able to say “I’m not close to my sister” without putting it in the past tense.
She wasn’t someone whose company I enjoyed, and I don’t even have regrets about that. We were both OK with our relationship. So why am I crying now over the thought that if I go home for my mom’s birthday this year, I won’t have to make stilted conversation with Claudia. Or that I won’t have to share an inflatable bed with her in the garage while we both try and aggressively fall asleep to avoid small talk.
I don’t know why I’m writing to you, to be honest. I know the best advice you can give is therapy. It just sounds so stupid to say that I really miss not getting on well with my sister. I guess I wanted to practice.
—Sad Sack