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