Word: sisters
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After their father died in 1994, Kathleen wanted to apply for legal guardianship to put their increasingly resistant mother in an Alzheimer's unit, but she wanted her sisters to agree. "I felt it would be easier for all of us," she explains, "if we came to that conclusion together." And that's when the wounds of childhood really divided them. The youngest sister--described as the peacemaker--could not bear the rage her mother was sure to feel. "My sister had a fantasy," Wittstock says, "that Mom would get better and that she could take Mom to lunch...
...took four years and 15 police reports before the youngest sister gave in and agreed that Kathleen should become their mother's guardian. Wittstock assumed guardianship in 2004. By that time, their mother was living alone and unkempt in her condo with no food in the house and the gas turned off. Now Mom is safely ensconced in an assisted-living home, and Wittstock is proud of what she accomplished with her sisters. "Our relationships are not always great," she says, "but we work...
...intense can that competition become? Deborah--not her real name--a Minneapolis, Minn., health-care aide who preferred not to be identified to protect family members' feelings, had always been favored over her elder sister, she says, as the daughter who behaved best. When her parents became ill, she sold her house and moved with her husband and their kids into Mom and Dad's home to care for them. As Mom's dementia worsened, she often refused to take her pills. When Deborah insisted, Mom whined, "Deborah's being mean to me." No one in the family took...
During their mother's last hospitalization, Deborah was tending to her acutely ill father, so her elder sister became the hospital's main family contact. When a nurse called her sister at 2 a.m. to say their mother was fading fast, Deborah's sister did nothing. Deborah had hoped to be with her mother at the end, perhaps to say a few last words. "My sister took that chance away from me," Deborah says, "and because of her, my mother died alone. I will never forgive her for that...
...Ethan L. Murray ’05, Thanksgiving is a holiday for which he is particularly thankful. His junior year of high school, Mr. Murray’s older sister, Amara Murray ’03, was accompanied to the family Thanksgiving dinner in Jamestown, R.I. by her Lowell House roommate, Shannon Music ’03. “I thought, ‘What a great girl,’” Mr. Murray recalls. “And then the next year, she came again for Thanksgiving and I thought, that’s the kind...