The strangest things
I don't remember when I first noticed it. But since my sister has been gone, I've noticed that we have the same hands.

No, I did not steal this from that scene in Beaches.

I looked at my hands a lot today, just staring at them in light of some sad news. We try to comprehend things that don't make sense. We want to do something, and we do these things with our hands. But sometimes we can only stare at our hands, hoping they know what to do even though we don't know.

Hands are weird to look at. Mine aren't especially nice. My fingers are too long and skinny. Bony. My knuckles are big and ugly, from early arthritis and years of playing piano. My skin is dry especially now that the weather is cooler and dryer, and because I always forget to lotion them until I notice that they hurt from dry skin.

I remember my sister's hands being in much better shape than mine are now. I don't take particularly good care of my hands. Sometimes I'm pretty sure my hands have aged a lot faster than I have. They seem like old lady hands.

My sister's hands used to bug me. When she'd hold her hand out flat, palm up, her pinky and ring finger would never quite get flat, curving back a bit. I never knew that I'd noticed that, or that it annoyed me, until I noticed one day after she was gone that my hands do the same thing when I first hold them out flat. It's not annoying anymore.

It's comforting. Not so cheesy as to say it's like she's holding my hand, but more like her hand is in mine. It's familiar.

It's a little piece of her that is still here with me. Like my hair that is somehow now wavy like hers used to be, even though my hair never used to be wavy. Or her clothes that I still have and wear sometimes, mixed into my wardrobe, but that never seem to wear out or wear thin even though many of my own clothes only make it one or two seasons before wearing out to the point of un-wearable.

It's a reminder that those we love and lose are never really that far away, and they will one day be close again.

Sometimes I think of the strangest things at the strangest times. Today I noticed again that our hands are the same.

C.T.