Remembering a friend's sisterly love, and her 'puzzling' gift [column]

On April 14, 2023, I lost a sister.

Leslie Bustard was a former cheerleader and bubbly bottle of goodwill if there ever was one. Just as she was ascending the summit of her creative life the destructive death of cancer descended upon her.

I may have grown up without sisters, but over the years, I've been caught up in the power of sisterly love. Besides my own dear wife, Leslie was the closest one I never had.

She gave me two gifts, 24 years apart, that bookend our friendship. The first was a sandwich.

I was road-weary from wrestling a huge U-Haul truck towing a Chevy Corvair on a trailer from St. Louis. Becky and the kids were arriving to Lancaster in our VW Vanagon on a separate day. Our families would become fast friends, but at that point, I was an intrepid campus minister whom she only knew from afar.

She welcomed me into their home, offered me their green couch to crash on, and extended a plate to me with lunch on it, silently brimming with caring hospitality and perhaps a wee bit of awkwardness for each of us.

I wasn't accustomed to such sisterly acts. Being raised with sisters might've come in handy, not only for me, but for my mom. She was outnumbered by guys: Dad, my two older brothers and myself.

Dad, though not a domineering man, had the bedside manner of a lawn mower repairman. Brothers Dave and Jim were, and continue to be, woodsman mechanics; me, a biking scholar. We boys absorbed our father's let's-get-it-done approach to life, including how to relate to men, women and children.

In middle school, girls were changing fast and that was intriguing to me and my friends. Our mouths must have fallen open like "Looney Tunes" characters on the day that Lisa and Margie broke down the monthly cycle to us in the cafeteria.

Like the starry-eyed boys in "The Virgin Suicides," I came of age enamored with girls yet paralyzingly frightened by their mysterious ways.

The real turning point for discovering sisters was at Bloomsburg University. I found myself thrown into a Christian student group there that took me in, taught me the basics of the faith and gave me a chance to enjoy egalitarian friendships across the sexes.

It was in one of those groups at Millersville where Leslie met Ned. They married in 1990. Little did any of us know the Beckers would move to Lancaster in 1999 to work at their church and become family best friends, our kids growing up together in the city.

My circle of sisters has only grown, greatly accelerated by a divine prank: God gave Becky and me four daughters. I was glad to be an audience to sisterhood, and I continue to marvel with joy over their harmonies. Literally, they harmonize at the drop of a hat. They do all kinds of other things my bros and I couldn't have imagined but which I can't live without: earnest eye contact, generous verbal and nonverbal language, detailed explanations, and (imagine this!) expressed emotions.

Leslie became a spiritual sister to me, though our personalities were as similar as a Philly cheesesteak and a PB&J sandwich.

Her memorial at Westminster Presbyterian Church was flooded with friends from far and near. Our family sat behind the Bustards drenched in tears from the moment Karen Peris opened the service, strumming an acoustic guitar and channeling some far-off spirit child through her delicate voice singing "Bright as Yellow."

The second gift Leslie gave me came a few months before she died. She handed me an envelope with a note on the outside: "I think this belongs to you." She said I could open "now or later," and I choose to do it at home expecting a sweet sentiment from a dear sister who was offering me some final word from her heart.

What I found inside puzzled me: a puzzle piece. I had no memory of owning such a thing, let losing it at the Bustards' house. Disoriented, I figured she was beginning to show signs of mental missteps from the cancer. Or she was pulling one over on me.

One month before she died, I asked her, "What's with that puzzle piece?" Leslie beamed, revealing to me with giddiness that it was indeed a prank. She knew I'd love being punked and would laugh about her gift until we met again.