Sisters

The Benes sisters were inextricably tied to one another for close to eighty years. Each of them attempted to move away from the other for brief periods of time, but they were never happy being apart. When your “Sissy” is your best friend, the long-distance thing does not work, especially back in the days when talking on the phone cost real money.

Betty and Judy each had three children and were always pregnant at roughly the same time. It was as if they had to share every life experience. My fondest memories of the two of them involve traveling. Mom was a teacher, so when summer came, she and Betty would load up the station wagon with camping gear and kids and head out onto the open road. We would be gone for weeks at a time with nothing other than foldup roadmaps and eight track tapes of Marty Robbins, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.

Mom was the driver and Aunt Betty was the navigator. She possessed an unparalleled ability to keep kids entertained in the station wagon for thousands of miles without the aid of digital devices. Riding shotgun, she sang, played games, told stories, made up history, laughed, tossed sandwiches into the back, invented ways for kids to pee without stopping, and frequently lied about how much farther we had to go to reach our destination.

The objective was often a little fuzzy and diversions were common. I might write a book one day titled “The Road to Shonto” after a full-day trip down a dirt road in Arizona because Aunt Betty wanted to see a “picturesque Indian village” that turned out to be a trinket shop.  

Aunt Betty ran an open house, frequently providing a loving home for the somewhat troubled friends of her children. Our family photographs from that era always have one or two extra faces that don’t look anything like the others. Her career, as is family tradition, was helping others. As the Director of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in Fort Bend County, she poured her heart into serving families in need, offering not just resources but genuine care and encouragement.

Life dealt her some blows. The death of her son Danny left her light a little dimmed. After that tragedy, there were occasional flashes of the old Aunt Betty that knew how to tell a dirty joke, but I felt that she carried thoughts of Danny around with her wherever she went. In the end, the horrors of dementia and pain took what was left of her once incandescent personality and her rapid decline and death was a blessing. She wanted to see Danny.

So, now she is gone and the Benes sisters are once again separated. I’m sure that Mom believes that this is a temporary situation and that at some point in the future they will be together bouncing down some dusty back road loudly singing “On The Road Again”.

They deserve that.