September 13

…is my sister’s birthday, and mine is 5 days later. She, and her entire New England world, household, home, family, are entirely gone, sold, dispersed. She died in January 2022, so this is my third birthday week without her. I miss her more every year, every month, every day. I know that soon now she will come to me, hold out her hand to me, and she’ll say, “Come ON, L’Em!” And I will grasp her plump, satiny hand and I will GO. Because I would go anywhere and do anything to see her, be with her, again. Oh, please, please, remember me , my darling.

“For this alone on Death I wreak/The rage that garners in my heart: / He placed our lives so far apart/ We cannot her each other speak.”

— Tennyson, In Memoriam