My Sister and I Reunited

This is an appropriate time to jump in to the 2025 52 Ancestors challenge, since my sister and I are in the process of being reunited in a way this week. She and I (and our three younger brothers) haven’t lived closer to each other than several hours drive away since she left home to go to college. Not that we weren’t in touch with each other, but by necessity it was not very often, and seeing each other in person didn’t happen with any frequency.

A year ago my husband and I significantly downsized our household and moved into a continuing care retirement community from our long-time house in a neighboring town. There were a number of reasons we decided it was time to make this move, and I won’t enumerate them now but we are very happy we made this move. On the other hand, downsizing is *really* hard.

Even as we were beginning our journey to this place, I suggested to my sister that it would be truly wonderful if she were to decide to move to the same community. She was also (slowly!) thinking about making a move from her long-time home to a similar type of community but had fixed on one closer to where she had lived for many years.

Our three younger siblings and I have lived within a relatively close proximity, most of us for a number of years. However, our youngest brother had only recently returned to the area and this contributed to my thinking that it would be really nice if my sister were also to come live closer to the rest of us. She has lived several hours drive away, making it more difficult to participate in family gatherings, celebrations of holidays, etc. Of course, as we all get older the difficulties increase, and she has had to chose to miss some gatherings. What was once a do-able journey in one day, to come down and then go back home, has become impossible.

After I suggested that my soon-to-be new home might be a choice for her as well, my sister started to explore the possibility. She saw that she could include such a move in her thinking and planning, and gave it serious thought. The upshot was that she concluded it was feasible financially, and although a difficult change to contemplate was one with enough benefits to decide to do it. So she started on the path to relocate.

As I started to write this, my sister was supervising packers and getting ready to hit the road south to move to the retirement community I already live in. In the last week, she actually made the move. So for the first time since she left home to start college my sister and I will live close enough to each other to be able to visit each other easily. I can even imagine running into her in the community. It will be a change for both of us, and probably require re-working and renegotiating what we expect from each other. Looking forward to it!