I forget this happens every year. It’s my fall mode, years of conditioning when fall was both an end and a beginning. Fall meant going back to school, saying good-bye to summer, starting anew, getting on the train, heading east. It was a mixed bag of anticipation and sadness.

My Sept. 18 New Yorker arrives, it’s cover a young couple facing one another under a giant, deep blue tree with a background of oranges, yellows and greens. It’s got a mood and that mood is mine. I turn the pages of find the title. NOSTALGIA. That’s it, that’s what I’ve got. No pill is going to cure this. I’ll just have to wait until the leaves have fallen.
 

None of the older sisters present made comment. Would they admit they always felt in charge and experienced an ongoing sense of always knowing best? I don't think so. Would they admit their younger sisters have taught them a thing or two? If cornered, probably yes. All I really know is when my husband asks about my older sister after she and I have had our weekly hour long phone conversation, he comments that I relate what she has said as though they were pronouncements from God.
 

Our lives touched over the years, not with regularity, but with pleasure when they did. Grace and I were kindred souls, sharing a love of music and a certain "take"on life, one of those friendships where you pick up right where you left off, though it might have been a long time in between.

A few weeks ago Jim died. He had lost touch with our world, a victim of Alzheimer's disease. His death was the release of a good soul, but nonetheless, a loss.

I sat down to write Grace a letter of condolence not really knowing what I was going to say until the words came on their own to fill the page. I was surprised by what seemed important. Yes, there were reminiscences about happy moments we had shared, but what I remembered was how Jim's face would light up with recognizable pleasure when we met. Oh that made me feel wonderful. Serotonin flowed over the ensuing conversation! His light wasn't just for me, it extended to all his friends, an inner glow of warmth for those he cared about.

Someone wise said, what our friends will remember about us is not all those great things we accomplished or failed to accomplish, but how they made us feel about ourselves. As I reread what I had written, I realized, HOW TRUE.