Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: sisters

  • Goodbye

    Give the ones you love

    wings to fly,

    roots to come back

    and reasons to stay.

    ~ The Dalai Lama

    I am suddenly feeling quite weary. My eyes are burning and I can barely stay awake. It is almost 11:00 pm, but I don’t think this is physical tired.

    Something is pulling me inward. I am pondering.

    My sister officially retired today. We have shared an office wall for many of the years she has worked as a massage therapist. In the past decade we have been together in three offices. After a session I could smell her essential oils when she would come out of her room on the way to the restroom to wash her hands. It smelled like love to me.

    Today I told her I will miss seeing her between clients. She said, “But now you can see me for other stuff. I will have time and energy to do things.”

    So what is this lump in my throat, this sense of sadness or loss?

    Today I was reminded of the teaching: When the conditions are present emotions will arise.

    I am saying goodbye to our relationship as colleagues.

    I am so thankful we are not saying goodbye to our relationship as sisters.

  • Divine Connections


    Today, I will stop straining to know what I don’t know.
    To see what I can’t see.
    To understand what I don’t yet understand.
    I will trust that being is sufficient,
    And I will let go of my need to figure things out.

    The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

    My heart and mind is so full my fingers must dance around the keyboard so I can sit in my skin. Sometimes you see life’s unfolding right before your eyes as has been my experience in spades the past couple of days.

    I had been invited to join a friend in Sunday’s Apple Cider Century bike ride. We have done it together before and had a great time but it was forecast to be very hot for September in Michigan. I thought that was why I was iffy about whether I was to go.

    Saturday evening I got word about a close friend who was in the hospital in another city following back surgery. She had been doing quite well but ended up having back spasms that they could not mitigate. “This would be a good time for a visit,” was the text message from her fiancé. She was experiencing inconsolable pain when I arrived. This is the same friend who was my advocate and healer when I had surgery in November 2012. It was an honor and a horror to be there with her. And I was not alone.

    Our now mutual friend met me there at the hospital. It was Doris who introduced me to Healing Touch back in the nineties. I choked back the emotion as I began doing the work. What a sacred circle of love we are….

    Thankfully, a whiff of relief came from the combination of medical intervention, energy healing, and grace. Several hours later, she was settled back in bed, her fiancé was with her, so I headed home. Another text from him popped in as I was driving, “She is sleeping soundly now.”

    Before going to bed I sent a my friend a text message saying I was just now home and so I would not be joining her on the bike ride the next morning.

    Sunday morning at 9 am I received a text message from my sister in Texas asking if this was a good time for her to call me. I have not spoken to her in decades…. I told her it was a perfect time for her to call. She was sharing a health situation she has been navigating because it might have an impact on my sister and me and our daughters. She had undergone surgery about 8 weeks ago. Is it a coincidence about that same time I was feeling the need to go to Texas to see her?

    We talked for an hour. It felt like no time had passed. In our heartfelt sharing the chasm of religiosity that had been a greater distance between us than the miles from Michigan to Texas dissipated like a bubble when it pops.

    If I had been on the bike ride I would not have been available for that call.

    After we hung up I sent her this photo that is hanging on my wall here in the tiny house.

    Divine connections revealing themselves….

  • I Was Very Pretty

    It had been twelve years since the unbearable death of her daughter, just weeks after graduating from college. About 9 years later, the surviving daughter named her own daughter after her sister. That child, namesake of her deceased aunt, was now three-and-a-half years old.

    On the 12th anniversary of her sister’s death, showing her young daughter a photo of her deceased aunt, she asked her daughter, “Do you know who this is?”

    “Yes, it is me,” she replied. “It is me (she said her own name, which was also the name of her aunt) when I was all growed up. I was very pretty.”

    Despite growing up in a distant state with infrequent visits, the child has been very attached to her grandmother, crying on occasion and saying she wants to go see her.

    She has also over the years insisted that she and her mother are sisters. Prior to the viewing of the photo and those clear comments, her mother had assumed the child was just confused with relationships.