Penicillin was a few years away yet. My grandmother, a young mom, pleaded with her older sister to live. Her sister, deathly ill with childbed fever and knowing by then that it was not to be, yearning to comfort her, asked her, Frances? Where are your children?
My grandmother said they were being watched by (whoever it was) while she came to see her in the hospital.
Her sister assured her that her own children, too, would be taken good care of.
And so my grandmother took in the little boys at her sister’s death, her brother-in-law feeling too overwhelmed to cope on his own and needing the help.They stayed for a few years, and my mom considered them almost more her brothers.
Years ago, talking to someone at church after we moved to California, in a chance remark I found the woman was the daughter of one of those boys–we were second cousins. Who knew.
Today we celebrated at the wedding of her daughter, laughing at our daughters being third cousins and why did it matter anyway and the improbability of having made the connection, glad we did just because it’s fun to claim each other.
We are all, in the end, each others’ brothers and sisters.