bonds.

My grandmother died on the morning of December 20th. I got the call at 8:36am from my sister, informing me of the news, through sobs. She had left behind 6 children, and a plethora of grand-children and great-grand children. Of those six children, three were women; sisters who themselves had 4 daughters: my two cousins, my sister, and myself.

There is something about the daughters of sisters that bonds you together. An unspoken truth that all understand. Hurtful things may be said but are easily forgotten. Minds are read, emotions felt, feelings expressed. Everything happens within the context of the tapestry that three women wove - patiently and deliberately.

The day she passed was a blur and before we knew it, all four of us were together in one home, left to plan the funeral and put into effect the logistics. We had, in the past, planned many events and activities together. We have the type of easy familiarity that allows hard tasks to get done within a matter of seconds. Sentences rarely need to be completed in order for us to be efficient and conscious of the work we are doing. One of us would already have taken the next step before anyone has told us what the next step even is.

But during this time, it seemed we had lost the capacity to think rationally. Everything moved slower. Much slower. What would have normally taken us minutes to do, would end up taking hours. The days leading up to the funeral were filled with tasks and decisions and to-do's. On Wednesday we needed to pick up an album from Target. Any other time and that would have been done in a matter of minutes. On this day however, all we wanted was to be together. We piled into the SUV - all 4 of us and the two babies (the newest members of our female bondage). We squeezed into the car, stuffed ourselves into the trunk and in between the car seats. We didn't care. All that mattered was that we were together, feeling one another's pain, understanding one another's heartache, anticipating one another's hurt. Nothing mattered but what was happening in that car, in those moments, in that circumstance.

She had done it again, that beautiful grandmother of ours. She had tied us together with yet another shared experience that moved straight through our mothers and into our cores, creating with it another layer to that bond, strengthening it in ways that we would not have seen possible.