I appreciate, Sprout, your putting things together from my different posts here. Insecurity seems to be a major feature of her personality. All her life, she said that it was very important to her to feel secure in material things. She has a domineering husband she's always trying to please, and he doesn't seem to like having too much to do with in-laws. The both of them seem to want to claim friends who have a lot, though neither of them seems to have many friends. The world has always scared her. She seemed always to believe that having money was a way of feeling safer.

It was never in her nature to put others down a lot. But she does seem to get impressed by people who have economic status. She and her husband seem to feel there's not much to be gained by hanging out with people who don't have a certain level of material success. I can kinda understand people of means not wanting to get too intimate with people who are poor. They might not like seeing poorer individuals struggling for things they can have easily. No one wants to be forced into a pitying state of mind all the time. And they don't want to watch people in difficulty, due to limited means, that they don't experience. I might be okay going out to Sonic for a burger, where they like to frequent good steak houses. People of means don't really want to talk about their lifestyle with someone who lives on a whole other level. I think there is a lack of commonality of experience.

She retired early because she could afford to. Her kids are grown, so her time is her own. I believe she wishes I had more because she genuinely wishes I was enjoying more of life's luxurues. I don't doubt that it honestly saddens her that there are nice things I can't afford. But I'm not living in a hovel eating cat food for dinner. I'm very content with what I have.

I remember how she was giddy with excitement when she bought a car that had a telephone installed in it. (Back before cell phones were everywhere.) I actually think her life is a bit boring because she doesn't seem to have a lot of interests. I'm always reading and following current events. She doesn't, to the point that she doesn't have a lot to converse about. She's quite a nice person, but the range of things she's interested in is pretty narrow. Somewhere along the line, she got real impressed with how affluent people live. Mimicking that seems to be what she and her husband attemot to do.

I've noticed that very highly affluent people are often the easiest for me to talk with, as they tend to have a lot of robust interests. They've traveled and done interesting things. My sister, I'm afraid, was always a bit dull. Her husband doesn't have much polish and can be quite ungracious, but I'm coming to think he doesn't really know any better. If I asked her to do me some favor, she's very quick to oblige. She's generous. But she seems to have no interest in just keeping up with what's going on with me, or sharing what's going on with her. I'm not sure what goals she has, other than seeming to want to imitate what she thinks is the way successful people do.

We may just be so different. We're two people who would never in a thousand years choose each other for friends. We happened to get born into the same family. I don't think that, just because two people are siblings, they have to be deeply involved with each other. Siblings sometimes don't have a lot in common, except a certain shared history.

I don't intrude on my sister. I live on the opposite edge of the continent. In no way, am I pushing myself into her life in a way that she or her husband might find me a nuisance. I think basic decency indicates that siblings keep reasonably in touch and express some bit of concern about large challenges that each other are coping with - like my s.o. being in very poor health. I'm not looking to wear her out with a litany of the troubles I deal with. I don't ask her questions she might find invasive. I believe in leaving people as much privacy as they want. If she stays away from a subject, I don't try to go there. Nowadays, long distance phone calls are free after 9 p.m. and on weekends on our cell phones. She doesn't participate in social media like facebook. I can't travel to visit her because my s.o. can't be left alone. Caring for him greatly constrains me. So she just lets months and years go by with next to no contact. I've no children. When her kids were growing up, I remembered every birthday and significant event. Recently, she moved to a new home. I don't even have her current address.

When there are thousands of miles separating people and traveling to visit is put on hold for years at a time, due to some circumstance, it can be hard to keep a connection alive. But I don't think you just become indifferent to the existance of someone like a sister. I didn't do anything bad to her.

Part of her admiration for "successful" people includes her wanting to believe that she has nice manners, such as upper class people are supposed to have. When our mother died, we discussed properly thanking people who offered condolences to our family. I offered to send out the "thank you" notes, as I like to do that sort of thing, whereas she would have found it a real chore. She told me that I need only send those notes to people who had sent flowers and not to people who had merely visited at the wake. If she had ever bothered to crack open an etiquette book, she would have found that no expert on nice behavior agrees with that. I was mildly horrified that she would think you're just supposed to thank people who spent money. Some of the most heart-warming gestures were made by people who didn't spend money: neighbors who came by to visit our father, non-relatives who showed up at the wake and spent time sitting with my father (some of them - childhood friends of my father's, who sat near, while he cried.) Nice person that she genuinely can be, she seems utterly clueless about what principles govern appropriate courteous gestures. But she thinks she knows, and she seems to assume it's about money. She's really not that cold, but she may be that dumb.

Maybe I've just solved the riddle. She never was a deep thinker. Maybe some things just don't occur to her. She was never good at spontaneous expressions of warmth. When I used to visit an aunt of ours who was dying of cancer, my sister told me that she would have no idea what to say to our aunt. I guess, in a sense, my sister is kind of shallow . . . not in that she's uncaring. Rather she seems to have some impediment in her ability to express caring. It's her capacity for expression that seems grossly under-developed. That may be something she can't help. Maybe I need to be more understanding of that.

Well, I guess I've beaten this subject to death. I would like to get over being so bothered about this. It has lately ruined my piece of mind.