Dorothy Rowe

Siblings Are For Life

I've been giving interviews about my new book, My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend, which concerns siblings of all ages. One question which these youthful interviewers often ask me is, 'When do people give up caring about their siblings?' This seems to imply that at some date, perhaps in early middle age, we cease to care whether our siblings are alive or dead, or whether they love, hate, infuriate or amuse us.

As I struggle to find a short, witty answer different images come to my mind. There's the photograph of Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire, standing amongst her chickens, taken to accompany in interview by Lynne Barber shortly after the death of the duchess's sister, Lady Diana Mosley. When Lynne asked her about her sister's death the duchess said that she never needed to keep a diary because she and Diana used to write to one another several times a week, sometimes even twice a day. 'She was amazing you know, unbelievable, serene and beautiful until she died. She was ill for ten days, I suppose she had a very small stroke and sort of faded. Nevertheless, the loss is indescribable because I mean I'm eighty three and she's been there all my life.'

My friend Una at 82 regularly undertakes the long drive from Sydney to Cooma in the Snowy Mountains of southern N.S.W. to visit her sister who, now totally incapacitated by arthritis, is sunk in despair. Una told me how hurt she is that her sister will not speak to her. 'She's the most important person in my life,' she said, and added wistfully, 'I don't know whether that's how she feels about me.'

Then there's my friend Nan who, at 81, who is often engaged on a long conversation, usually on the phone, with her sister Bette. Bette is virtually blind. Always a passionate reader, she now depends on audio books. Nan and Bette talk about books, their children and grandchildren, and their past, their childhood and adolescence in a country town, and their parents, long dead but still alive to them as they speculate about what their parents' thoughts and feelings, their wishes and disappointments were in the years when the sisters were completely wrapped in the self-centredness of the young. They talk about their five siblings who are dead and show a certain patience and tolerance which, as I well remember, they did not always show when their siblings were alive. These conversations are a kind of making peace within the family.

If the interviewer grants me the time I'll tell the story of my Auntie Doff. She was the youngest of my mother's family. Mother was the fourth of six children. After her came Jack and then, an unwanted afterthought on her parents' part, came Doff. Doff spent her final years in a nursing home. In her nineties her past slipped away from her and she took up residence in a time when she was a young woman and her mother was old and ill. When I visited her she would say to me, 'Mother's not well. Nurse Nelson's been to see her,' and then she would urge me to leave because, 'Ella will be waiting for you.' I hoped not because Ella was my mother and ten years dead. On one visit I tried to turn our conversation to other things. I asked her if she remembered what her mother, my grandmother, was like when Doff was a little girl. My aunt smiled sweetly, a little apologetically, and shook her head. We sat in silence and then, suddenly, she said, 'Mother always favoured Jack.'

When do we stop caring about our siblings? Not in our lifetime. Never.

Dorothy Rowe My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend: The Making and Breaking of Sibling Bonds Routledge.