KDlady, it is hard to have such a life-long -altering situation in ones life. I do not have any diseases in my line but many female relatives whose mothers died when they were infants/young, mine included. I think it is harder for those who have devastating events in their early years to face forward and not look in horror behind them all the time. The urge to play "what if" and wonder what one's life might have been like is strong in me. I am going to be 60 next month and have grown past lots of that but still hear echoes of it when I do anything family-related.

I know what you mean about visiting your sister; my stepmother became senile and I "had" to visit her in the same wing of the same hospital my mother died in and the thoughts and deja vu of the past drove me to therapy. I cannot imagine the pain of having so many around you in your life so you have to witness similar scenes over and over. It was a lot of "help" to me when my stepmother finally died in 2001.