My house is full of family this morning. Sad things happen. Good people come. Wednesday afternoon, following a medical struggle lasting almost four months, my sister’s husband passed away. She has been a rock throughout his illness and now I’m trying to convince her to let the rest of us take care of her for the next few, tough days. Not easy. She’s accustomed to taking care of herself.

She and I made the trip to the Swartz funeral home yesterday. Two sisters out to make “the arrangements.” We’ve done this before. Widow is not a new role to our family. As of Wednesday, there are five of us. It is the business of the next few days that will save her from the total realization of what has happened. There she sat, carefully listing relatives, spelling each name as Scott made copious notes. His social security number? I stared at Vern’s worn billfold as Karen searched for the card. An everyday item so personal, so him, left for her to hold onto.

Oddly, in some ways, yesterday was a good day. One of the nicest sister days we’ve had in years. We wound up at Sam’s club to buy fruit. When there’s no other way to help, I cut up a big bowl of fresh fruit. I offered to drop her by my house for a nap, but she insisted upon riding along. As we were checking out, the nice, unsuspecting hippie-ish, check-out guy questioned, “So, you two have big plans for the weekend?” We froze. Looked at each other and after a short nervous laugh, Karen burst into tears. Oh my. We laughed about it later. We actually found a few opportunities for laughs.

Today, we women folk will meet at Karen’s house help her select an outfit to wear, venture out to order flowers, and attend to a few other details for the memorial service on Saturday. Karen’s daughter and two daughter’s-in-law have taken the day off to be with her and Maggie and I get to tag along. Family day. Just as Maggie said at breakfast,”something good always comes from something bad.”