siblings

Because these are the only three people on the planet who:
Know the sound of our dad’s voice singing “his eye is on the sparrow” from across the farmyard,
Shoveled manure from a pigpen with me,
Knew the combination of rings we had to answer on the party line,
Crawled through attics looking for kittens with me,
Built bale forts and mazes with me and then pulled the bales apart when I panicked and couldn’t find my way out,
Have tasted the sweetness of the berries along Raspberry Lane,
Remember that feeling of nervous responsibility while holding the flashlight and/or ladder while Dad climbed down into the well,
Know the sound of our mother’s voice when she’d sing “Good morning Merry Sunshine, how did you get up there?”
Remember a dog named Curly and a horse named Prince,
Know what it’s like to be woken in the middle of the night to drag waterlogged cows out of flooded pastures,
Remember exactly what Dad’s aftershave smelled like once he was clean and ready for church,
Enjoyed a good chuckle when Mom accidentally brought a marijuana t-shirt home from Holland,
Know the precise way Dad liked his eggs, fried in the cast iron frying pan with crispy edges and a yoke that “would run down your chin”,
Remember the taste of Mom’s freshly baked buns with “Gramma jam”,
And know the ache of grief from losing Dad to a tractor accident and Mom to cancer;
We drove hundreds of miles across the prairies for a short visit to the mountains because one of us has been beaten up by cancer (and other worries) and needed some companionship.

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