Collateral damage from 2016

Last night, my sisters and I had dinner together (along with our  menfolk).

In an ordinary year, this wouldn’t have been a big deal. After all, labmonkey moved to a city only a bit over an hour from my house in January, and our other sister lives in the same city I do.

In fact, on the very first day of this year, we all drove home together from a family gathering, and I know we talked about how excited we were to spend time together and have more sister dinners.

And then 2016 happened.

Between the 1st of January and last night (the 18th of December), my sisters and I have been all together in the same room at the same time exactly THREE times.

1. Right after my father’s accident, when we drove together to Capital City to see him as he was airlifted back to Canada.

2. In July, when the whole family gathered after we learned that my stepfather’s cancer was going to take his life much sooner than we could have expected.

3. In August, for my stepfather’s funeral.

That’s it.

For the entire rest of this year, we have been dividing and conquering, coordinating to make sure that one of us is with a parent as often as possible. We even scheduled a Google hangout at one point when we looked at our schedules and realized that there wasn’t going to be a single day in the next eight weeks where all three of us would be in southern Ontario.

We have been a steadfast, unwavering support system for our parents while also somehow holding our own lives together.

But we really miss each other.

Hopefully there will be more sister dinners in 2017.

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