mandy my sister from another mister

I met you so few times in my life, the last time I believe you were in your middle teens & i was in my early twenties.

you came to visit my family, just before I divorced.

these replicating patterns: having children early & then divorcing, much like your mother (Joyce) the mother I never really knew. due to her disappearing from my life with your father (john c)

I was two then, not understanding where my mother had disappeared to. after a few months my sister & I were placed in a children’s home for a year. it was a horrible terrifying time. after that year my father found a family (beatties) to look after us, they were physically abusive did their best to terrify me. when my father remarried he managed to evict them. imagine my surprise many years later when your mother told me ‘they were friends who let me know how you were’

I would not see our mother properly again until I was 13 & that as a few furtive meetings, furtive in case my father & step mother found out. to even talk of your mother was forbidden in my home.

then during one of the times that I ran away from that terrible home, she rescued me

it was winter I’d been sleeping/hiding on a building site & I had nowhere to go. a meeting was arranged between my father & her for me to visit every other weekend & that arrangement fell apart so quick.

I guess it was a shock to you: this grumpy teenager too frightened to say anything in case it upset people, trying to come to terms with a family that seemed to like each other. again I became inconvenient to your mother & I saw her only occasionally.

then I left properly to join the navy. leaving that area forever, becoming less of a burden on my father & stepmother.

you were too young to talk to about my life at that time & I couldn’t talk to your mother about any of that without upsetting her. or your father, I never really knew him either.

then your mother created a fight, a petty row so none of us talked for a while & used that time to move again, leaving no forwarding address. no goodbyes.

so that was it: I had a few meetings with you over 10 years that I can count on one hand, then you were gone.

I did hear that you joined the police, to become a dog handler & formed a long lasting relationship with your best friend.

& then. & then one afternoon I tried finding your mother, I did.

she had been dead for five years.

& you could not be bothered/did not have the decency to let me know.

a serving police officer unable to find somebody?

I guess she left you everything & you were fearful I might mount a challenge to the will.

or

maybe you had just decided to forget me entirely much as it appears it was easy for your mother & father to do about me & your sister.

the irony eh?

you being able to build a trusting relationship with dogs, other women but not for blood relations.

forgive me if I sound bitter, this isn’t about bitterness or regrets-it’s not easy to have regrets over something I never had with you.

more of a sadness that you couldn’t be bothered to be decent or to even try

this was your loss