What's that Hallmark B.S. About God Giving You as Much as You Can Handle?
Merryl and I at my 40th Birthday party I usually have some glib opening line to annual Christmas Letter to pitch it low and slow, and swing hard at the zinger of some entertaining misfortune-of-the-year, with your heroine spinning a tale of personal drama, fleeting despair, and the final surge of determination that leads to triumph. Not this time. My sister Merryl died the first week of May. I have no words for the way this feels. My brother-in-law Stuart called with the news as we’re headed to the beach. I didn’t hear him at first. The information would not pierce my consciousness. “What?” He repeats. “Merryl died?”. And again. “She died, as in for real she died?” Once more. Both real and unreal. Eerily, her last text message to me read, “I DIED!”. She was not well that week, had collapsed in her neighbor’s apartment, and was revived by EMTs at the hospital. She walked home, feeling better, after being bored there two nights. Merryl had a flair for the dramatic. Not th