One day last year, she told me she gave a new blouse to our mother, that was a gift to her from me. And my mother had already received a similar gift. A couple of months later, she gave away all her jewelry. Both of these actions shocked me, but I didn’t ask why, fearing to intrude on her privacy. I wish I had asked her directly. Then she began to sound very tired on the phone and not her usual joke making self. But I was going home on May 3, and she was looking forward to us talking in private on the way home from the airport. On March 29, she hadn’t slept in 3 days, with the opioid epidemic, her new doctor cut off her sleep aids, cold turkey. She would not go to the hospital; I live in another state. She talked to her only son on the phone; she refused her husband’s entreaty to let him call an ambulance. She walked in the bedroom, put a 25 caliber to her temple and pulled the trigger.
I only learned what a wonderful person she was as our mother began to have health problems some years ago and my sister assured, ‘Don’t you even worry, I will always be there for our mother’. My sister was one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met; maybe too kind and sensitive for this world. She never said a word to her son, her husband, not me and not her best friend and there is no note. I miss her every day of my life.