Today I am sad. My sister is getting worse. She has Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home. She just turned 70 – too young for this ailment that has been plaguing her for the past 5 – 8 years. She is also far away – twelve hours by car – and so I can’t see her as often as I would like. It’s hard being this far away.

My sister’s memory is so short that she loses her words in the middle of a sentence. Still, she has a good sense of humor so she laughs. She has a Ph.D. in psychology, so she listens intently when people are talking and, though she can’t follow their conversation, she understands the feelings that are motivating the words. “You are so filled with joy,” she said to me one day when I was telling a story about something funny that had happened. “You are so kind,” she said at another time when I was voicing my concern for someone else. My eyes fill with tears even remembering these words of hers.

She is my oldest friend. Being eleven years older than me, she cradled me in her arms when I was a baby and carried me on her hip when I moved into the toddler years. When I was nine, she married and I was the flower girl at her wedding and at fifteen, I flew to where she and her husband lived, and traveled with them and their two children on a month-long camping trip through all the national parks in the Western U.S. That remains one of my happiest memories – cradling her baby son, who is now almost like a son to me and carrying her toddler daughter on my hip, a woman now, who feels more sister-like than niece to me. When I was in college, I spent a summer in the town where my sister lived, going to the local university and helping her through her divorce. I decided to transfer to that college and remained near her for three more years. After that, we’ve always lived at a distance, talking on the phone mostly and seeing each other as we could. The past several years, however, she’s been less emotionally available. I didn’t understand until her condition moved to a point that it was undeniable. A severe concussion from a bicycle accident twenty years ago had come home to roost. She simply could not think clearly anymore.

Up until that time, Leslie had been my confidante, one of my closest allies in a world that had not always kind; the image of constancy in a life that had had its share of pain from the premature death of three other siblings. I can see her clearly in my mind: high cheekbones, square face, almond-shaped dark eyes, straight white teeth, big open smile, and I can hear her low chuckle.

I won’t see Leslie again for a while, perhaps another two or three months. And already I am one of the few people she remembers. Will she remember me by the time she sees my face? I don’t know. Will she be alive for much longer? I don’t know that either.

Sometimes a friend of hers will call me when he’s visiting, in hopes she and I will have a few minutes to talk. Her voice brings me comfort. He says she loves hearing my voice, as well. But the last few times, I have missed the call and only had a message to hear. “Hello,” Leslie says, “are you there?” In the background, I hear her friend tell her it’s a message machine. “Okay, then, well, have a nice day,” she says, then laughs. “I don’t think she’s there,” I hear her say before the phone goes dead.

Distance makes all this harder than it would be if I could dash in and see her every few days. That’s the truth. I cared for my brother when he was dying and when you’re right there, the deterioration of a body or a mind takes on its own rhythm and its own time. As Bob Dylan wrote, “Something huge far off, up close ain’t never that big.”

But I am far off and that’s the reality. I don’t have the resources to hop on a plane anytime I get the notion to run see my sister. Instead, I have to hope I’m home when she calls, and plan trips when I can.

The one thing that brings me comfort is knowing that Leslie is fine. She has a happy nature and the nurses love her. She has family and friends there who attend to her needs. But I grieve over the loss of my sister. A touchstone who is slipping away.

And yet, I will always have what I have now – my memories and connection to her. I will always be able to conjure up her image since it is emblazoned in my mind.

I just wish I were closer or that I was rich enough to fly to see her often.

Alas, I am not and this is life, and I will have to do the best I can.