Maggie Pill Mysteries

If this were a typical day, I might have called my sister and talked about nothing for a half hour. She knew I love my husband, so I could gripe for a while about his foibles and she wouldn't judge. She was patient with my stories, which tend to weave a bunch of asides in as I struggle toward the main point. She shared my negative optimism about life: It isn't perfect, but it's what we've got. Instead of calling, I might have driven the 30 miles to her house so we could go out to lunch. Or we might have sat on her porch, sipped tea, and relived our childhood. Those things were typical, but they're impossible now, since my sister died suddenly at sixty-three. There are positives here. She often said she didn't want to linger into old age, and we agreed that a quick death is better than a slow decline. (Hence the deer suit in the Sleuth Sisters stories.) We'd been out together the day she died, and her last words to me were how much fun it was, doing n...

In the past week I've lunched with two friends who lost a sister, one recently, the other a while back. Since my sister died in May, our conversations wind around the theme of sisterhood and what it feels like to be the one left behind. Yes, Mom made our dresses! In two of the three cases the sister was younger. Both left behind families that needed them, making it more of a tragedy than simply the loss of a sibling. We take comfort in supporting them in whatever ways we can. In all three cases death leaves a void for us, a person whose role can't be filled by anyone living. Sisters grow up together, so we can't start over and build a new sister relationship. We might have sister-like people in our lives, but nothing replaces that person who was always there in your childhood, your strongest supporter one moment and the one who tried to stab you with a knitting needle the next. The loss of someone who understands you intuitively, a person who shares the same roots, ...