StoryCorps brings loved ones together for thousands of meaningful conversations about the things that matter most. The StoryCorps mobile tour visited Brattleboro last month, and recorded conversations with folks from across Vermont and beyond.
Today, we hear from two sisters who reflect on life's trials and the bond they share as siblings.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Donna Macomber: So I've been your sister, and I've watched you, I've watched your evolution as a human — from your incredibly playful, creative and joyful childhood, through the rugged landscape of our family and the things that we experienced together that were hard and like climbing steep mountains. And then I watched you really take a deep, deep dive into work that I think very few people can do.
So we lived in San Francisco together for a couple of years, and during that journey, we were young, I think you were 16, 17, and I was 21, and you were diagnosed with a pretty significant health issue. And can you talk to me about what that was and what it was like for you to be such a young person and navigating that particular experience?
Linda Macomber: Yes, I can. Yeah, that was a real tough one. I learned that I had a brain tumor, and it was benign. We didn't know it at the time, but it was, it was one of the scariest things. And that's when I realized, I think, at a young age, that life is really precious.
I had questions about my own mortality and — but it all worked out, and here I am 60.
Donna Macomber: So what I remember is you and I had a code word that we weren't sure you were gonna be yourself when you, like, came out of brain surgery, and that I was like, on your surgeon, like, like, wanting all the answers and the what ifs. And I remember he said to me, "Donna, you know, we're not going to go there. Your sister has a brain tumor. I'm a neurologist. I'm going to operate on her, and then we'll talk about all the what ifs." But you and I had a code, like some silly word that I don't remember now.
Linda Macomber: I do.
Donna Macomber: You remember it? Can you tell me what is?
Linda Macomber: Manolo.
Donna Macomber: Manolo? Right. Manolo, of course, it was. That when you came out of anesthesia I wanted you to tell me that. And I remember your dry chapped lips, and I was trying to feed you ice chips, and you're like, 17 and gorgeous, and had just taken off your sundress to, like, go into surgery. And we had living to do in San Francisco.
Linda Macomber: Yes, we did.
Donna Macomber: We were just getting started, right?
Linda Macomber: Yes, we were.
Donna Macomber: So when you said that word to me, it was like a bridge from complete terror to solid ground. And I think, when I think of the Earth that you are, just from the time you were like a kid, just like solid ground, like present and playful, and anything that I have faced in my life, I have absolutely known that I was going to grab onto your hand, right, and that it would be OK.
So this year, when I was needing heart surgery and kind of in shock...
Linda Macomber: Yes.
Donna Macomber: ...you were there in such a solid way that nobody else, nobody else could possibly fill. And part of that has to do with the pairing of our having gone through ecstatic and also traumatic things together and just having a skill set that first of all, I learned vulnerability this year. Right? I learned what it means to have somebody make an incision and screw something into the wall of your heart. And as a Leo, you know, my heart is bossy, like, that's the middle of me. For some people, that's like a belly or stomach.
Linda Macomber: You did so well.
Donna Macomber: The heart is the middle of me. And you really made it possible for me to feel like I could do anything, that even if I were facing, you know, the end of my life, that it was going to be all right, and it was going to be an adventure, and we were going to continue to do all the things we do to celebrate and just serve or give where we can, right, but we were going to keep laughing and talking about it.
Linda Macomber: The most intimate relationships that I have had are with people in their dying moments.
Donna Macomber: Tell me. Tell me.
Linda Macomber: They are open, raw, real.
Donna Macomber: Kind of like you right this minute.
Linda Macomber: Yeah. I remember this one woman, and I used to — well, this one particular woman, she said that she had been alone for many years, and she was, I think she was dying of cancer, and she was in a nursing home. And she looked up at me, she had the biggest blue eyes, and she said, "I just wish somebody would climb into bed and hold me." Yeah, it probably didn't look good in the nursing home, but what I can say to that is, I just sat on the bed and just held her, and she cried. And when I came back to work, she was gone.
People are so open, and in my experiences, they, it's like the only time that they've ever asked for anything, some of them. And I think that things melt away, uncomfortableness and masks and all makeup, and they're just raw and real. I have sat with, I would say, thousands of people in their passing.
Donna Macomber: Wow. I think that there is a way in which, and I'm not the only one who has said it, who has used these words that, like, you are not of this world. That the things that people genuinely reach for or grasp or desire are things that are not what you stand for or what you give off or what you bring or what you offer in your relationships. I don't know how you got here or where the hell you're going from here, but my life would not be what it has been if you hadn't chosen to show up. And I can imagine my own death, but I cannot imagine losing you.
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