Friday, March 24, 2017

A Tale of Two Cups

The three of us traveled together to Crescent City to celebrate our brother's life
and mourn his death with the people he spent his days with. When we stopped for
coffee on that rainy day, Jill noticed these beautiful cups. She said "let's get two of
these, so when we are home we can call each other and drink from them and have
coffee together." Bob bought them for us.
Once we returned home, we talked on the phone more frequently than we had in
many previous years. We discussed some of the difficult things about growing up in our
family, about losing two of our brothers only six months apart. About some of the fun times
we had together when we were young and best friends and roommates.
She in her early twenties. I in my late teens.
We sang Caberet on the phone together one afternoon; our theme song from those days.
We used to talk about showing up at Denny's in Costa Mesa at three in the morning and
breaking into that song, dancing in the aisles and waking up those seemingly dejected
humans who found themselves there. I wish we had done that, but even planning it was
good for our spirits. It acknowledged that it was ok to consider doing something outlandish,
and that calling attention to yourself for being different might not be a bad thing.
Two sisters discovering who we were.
Sometimes we would just text "I'm having coffee with you this morning" with a picture
of the cup. We had coffee together through Hugh's heart surgery and her cancer
diagnosis. Through her illness and her move to Placerville for those bittersweet two months
when again, we saw each other every day and were best friends.
I keep both cups here now. This morning I pulled one down as I sometimes do,
to have coffee with Jill.

©2017Sheri Hoeger

5 comments:

LiveLoveLearn said...

Beautiful! It's a living tribute to your sister. ☕️ ☕️

LiveLoveLearn said...

Loving!!!! Loving!!

PainterGirl said...

What a lovely story, Sheri. Thank you for sharing this. I can't imagine life without my two siblings, so my heart aches for your loss.

Anonymous said...

I love your story! Love Meredith

Unknown said...

What a great story Sheri, as i was reading it i could see Jill in my minds eye and for that moment she was with me again. Kathy