My sister, she was the older one by ten years and there was a lot of good in my sister.  Mostly I admired her: her love of reading – I hated.  Her love of teaching – by the time I went to college, Teachers in Montreal were a dying profession.  She wrote a story like no one else and got published in Readers Digest- I only found my voice at 40.  She had a gazillion friends – I cherished my five.

My sister and I were like night and day and yet we could make each other laugh at either’s expense.  Expense, odd I choose that word because the biggest difference between us was shopping: each trip to Chicago had her going to the library for a new book to read while I shopped the malls.  She sat on the bench and read.  She sat on the chairs and read.  I tried clothes on and she sat in the dressing room and read.   Alan would drive the car and in between the arguments on directions, she read.  On long trips, though, she slept: IF SHE KNEW ALAN HAD THE DIRECTIONS.   I think I even knew how to get to Trails, I called it. Because everything in Chicago was out in the boondocks…trails, for a Montrealer.

When Laura first moved to Chicago she marvelled at how she lived in Farm Country.  Montreal, any distance longer than 20 miles and you are in Farm Country.  When Laura first moved to Chicago she really thought she was living in Farm Country until she bacame a Chicago-lander and began calling a ‘roof’ a ‘ruff’ did she become a genuine U.S. citizen.  That, and she wanted to vote.  So Laura began studying US Immigration Law.  And the day she swore allegiance, was the day she packed away her Canadian passport and became American.  Of course only when she crossed the border; then the Canadian passport came out all the way through Europe.  No way she was an ‘American’ travelling through Italy.

Yes, yes, we all know Laura’s tales of travel.  Especially poignant was when she thought Alan told the bus driver to leave the pit-stop without her and she started to cry.  Tough as she was, my sister knew a good cry.  She always cried.  And never at the sad moments; always out of the blue and always out of pain.  Yes, my sister knew pain - Life was not good for her health.  Great for the doctors though.  God Bless America, she fucking missed Medicare.

I made enough trips to Chicago to know some of you: and your names escape me now except Alisha, because your kids were special to her.  Actually I truly believe that my sister never had kids because she already had so many.  Each kid Laura ever taught was one of her own.  I always heard about the kids, the good kids.  The smart ones always interested her and made her a better teacher.   The dumb ones, well…we know who those were.  Every year.

When it came to my kids and school I always looked to her for advice on how to handle a difficult teacher and she knew the key words not to alienate and oh how she made sure I didn’t alienate because, she used to say, the kids whose parents she didn’t like got the brunt of her teacher brutality.  Zack and Carly could never be those kids.  So each and every time I had to have school interaction, was a phone call to my sister first.  Then I went to parent teacher interview.  What parent likes parent teacher interview…and how hard I tried to teach her restraint, empathy, even compassion.  Nope, my sister told you how it was no matter what the issue.

Growing up with Laura, meant one thing to me. Coffee night out with the girls, because I always got to go.  She always took me.  No matter where or what or who she went with: I was there.

Oh yes, ten years younger in the Luffer family was heaven on earth.  Especially when Chuckie and Laura were put in the same room.  I had sneakers fly out the door when Laura got mad.  Forks got stuck in polkes when Laura got mad.  When Laura got mad, everyone ducked and we kept on ducking and I am sure there are many of you today, who had to duck one time or another.  God love her…or you better duck.  Either that or have a copy of the newest book on the Times Best Seller List.

Don’t any of you think, for one minute my brother and sister got along.  I think that began when Chuckie moved out.  I bet none of you know that story or perhaps all of you do but it warrants a word or two to explain my siblings and their relationship…   My brother, the Woodstock bloke, went to Europe when he was 18.  I was 10 and Laura was 20, but like yesterday I remember the exact details of what went down the day my brother moved out.  He had come back from Europe looking like a Beatle with extra long hair and my father had given him a week at home, unwinding from his nights in hostels, when he was told to go and get a haircut.  The good son, when father said go, went and got his hair cut.

He might not even know this…apparently they had cut his hair awfully short and he had called my mother to complain.  My mother, at work, then dialed my sister for explicit instructions NOT to make fun or mention his haircut.   Well, she couldn’t have done anything worse, because armed with that information I don’t think my brother made it past the first stair before Laura made a crack about….the haircut.   That night my brother left home and moved out.  I remember because the fight my mother and sister had was heard down the block.  But yep, Chuckie moved out because of his sister and it was at that moment, the two of them truly became brother and sister.  Friends.  Brother and Sister.

Laura and I shared a unique trait as sister.  We both were compulsive.  This girl couldn’t make a move until the bills were paid, the shirts to the cleaners…but wash a dish, make the bed, do the laundry:  “Alan, where are you”.   Oh yes, my dear sister, B.A. Before Alan, never washed a dish, made a bed or even cooked a meal.  The very first time, after Laura moved to Chicago, I came to visit.  Those days they rented an apartment in Wheeling and it was Thanksgiving.  Laura made the turkey…which I have got to tell you was totalling shocking for me.  I didn’t know Laura knew what a Turkey looked like.  You know what, I was right.  We sat down, Alan began carving and because Laura always had to have the tuchus, bent over to grab it.  But before the tuchus she grabbed a bag…a bag full of giblets.  Uncooked giblets.  Giblets still in a package.Still in the turkey.  For the first time in her life that was when she learned that Turkeys have giblets packed in the tochus end of their bodies.  Finally a Turkey taught Laura.

We laughed so hard, that night.  Of course I had my winter coat on because my sister didn’t know what it was like to be cold.  I actually had to sneak the heat on when I used to go to bed in her house…This girl was always hot.  And I always cold.

Alan made Laura a changed woman.  No, she still didn’t do the cleaning, and no, she still didn’t do the laundry and once in a while she told him to make fish But Alan made Laura a changed woman.  She began to wear jewellery.  My sister never wore jewellry.  My sister never had her nails done.  When I first heard she had a ‘weekly’ and an actual manicurist who she knew by name - I knew my sister was a changed woman.  When Laura met Alan, I was already married and had Carly and never thought I would ever see my sister married to such a man, a match for her.  There could, in a lifetime, never have been a better mate and love and husband than Alan, for Laura.  Even my husband would not give me a foot rub each night.  But her Alan, each night…every night…he rubbed her feet.  I was actually jealous.  No way, no how, Henry was ever going to rub my feet.

So, my sister and I – two opposites.  Until I had my kids.  Carly, the apple of her eye – Zack the painfully spoiled little boy.  But loved my kids she did.  It was hard, her here and us in Montreal…a boy and his aunt weren’t as close as a girl and her aunt.  Carly had two mothers – Laura was one and I, the other, till the very end.

Laura, you will never know or maybe you did, how much I was grateful for Carly to have an aunt that she respected, that she told her problems to, that she confided in.  And sweetie, in her you met your match.  My daughter never held back her pisk…she told her aunt exactly as her aunt told her.  Which is exactly why they stayed so close.

To Laura’s credit; when I couldn’t do the hard tells to my daughter, her aunt did.  Her aunt did my dirty work.   Our relationship went exactly as the cards fell.  Our relationship was written for us, that I have no doubt about.  There are no regrets because we both had the memories and that is probably what got us to the point in our lives we were at on December 24th.  And after talking with Alisha, I knew my sister had bonds in friendships here that very few people in a lifetime make.  For that I am grateful to one and all, but knowing I can’t be here, does not stop me from giving my sister her due.

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