In the heart of the pandemic, July 2020, I got a call on a strange number in the Dallas-Forth Worth area; because my sister Susan lived there, I answered it when I would usually decline. The call wasn’t from Susan, but from an emergency room doctor who had found my number in her phone as a recent call to a person with the same last name. I knew where his introduction was leading, though I hoped it wouldn’t be the worst possible news, even as he was embarking on the sentence I dreaded, that Susan had died of a heart attack that morning. Her friend had brought her in after she had died in her car on the way to an appointment with her cardiologist. It had been sudden: In the short time it took her friend to put something in the trunk after getting Susan settled in the passenger seat, she had left us all. And the long days of our lives lived without her had begun.
