All I can Muster

Tuesday: Hyde Park Young Professionals Meet-up

Wednesday: Salon

Thursday: Wine Meet-up and Low Country Boil

Friday: Happy Hour

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When traffic bursts through the market house doors, a waft of chilled air leaks onto the biergarten. I position myself as close to the door and the beer serving cart as I can. For obvious reasons. This is where I will stay for the entirety of Sunday afternoon contemplating the no-more-ness of my sister. She died earlier this morning after a mercifully short duration of suffering. Liver cancer. Liver cancer in a tea-totaler. And look at me. So the biergarten seems the appropriate place to celebrate the cruel randomness of our existence.

 

We loved each other as sisters and brothers do but Sharon and I were never close. A substantial age difference didn’t help and we ended up with radically different temperaments and outlooks on life. We shared a past loosely, a present hardly at all. Even our diseases differed. Her schizophrenia was a unintended gift from our mother. My restlessness and inner hermit came from a long line of wanderers. An affliction of its own.

 

Death renders me speechless and senseless because I can’t reconcile it with anything else in my head. We’re here and then we’re not. I don’t know how to grieve in the traditional, Christian sense. I don’t have the skill set. I’m the opera singer at a plumber’s convention.

 

Chef T rescues me in the late afternoon. I join her at Market Wines and then on to a venue to watch the World Cup and eat pizza. I am poor company but appreciative of the salve of her companionship for I am rubbed raw with loss.