My Sister Died Alone
by Andy Clausen
I think of my sister’s death
She was 7 years younger than me
How could it happen that way?
There is something fundamentally wrong
with our national death culture
Jessica Mitford was right — the money, the illogic
that permeates our disposal of the dead
is scary unreal asexual obscene ludicrous
lachrymose dyspeptic capitalism
Life is reduced to deletions from a data bank
Some agency was her guardian
Her son who lives in Holland had no other
choice I guess
I saw her a month before she went
They took everything from her, phone
computer a life’s collection of keepsakes
took it all to hell and gone
No phone made it tres dificil to get her
She wrote for travel magazines, travelled the world from
the Poconos Modern Bride to Costa Rica every
country in Europe Russia Australia
Later edited & wrote her own Airline industry mag
She drank with NYC’s big time journalists
She was dean’s list at SF State she wrote for
the San Fran Chronicle
but she died alone 40 miles south of St. Louis
I saw her about a month before she went
She thanked me for when I was in the seventh grade I’d
walk her home from half day kindergarten
on my lunch — St. Louis Bertrand
I thought she had more time — died alone
Money might have kept her around
That’s what she told me at that large hospice
“If there had been more money.”
My mother lasted 18 years after a diagnosis
of 4 months left
My sister died alone in Missouri