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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDavid Sedaris remembers his sister, Tiffany, who committed suicide.
Reflections
Now We Are Five
A big family, at the beach.
by David Sedaris
October 28, 2013
The siblings, clockwise from top left:
Gretchen, Lisa, David, Tiffany, Paul, and Amy.
Now We Are Five
A big family, at the beach.
by David Sedaris
October 28, 2013
In late May of this year, a few weeks shy of her fiftieth birthday, my youngest sister, Tiffany, committed suicide. She was living in a room in a beat-up house on the hard side of Somerville, Massachusetts, and had been dead, the coroner guessed, for at least five days before her door was battered down. I was given the news over a white courtesy phone while at the Dallas airport. Then, because my plane to Baton Rouge was boarding and I wasnt sure what else to do, I got on it. The following morning, I boarded another plane, this one to Atlanta, and the day after that I flew to Nashville, thinking all the while about my ever-shrinking family. A person expects his parents to die. But a sibling? I felt Id lost the identity Id enjoyed since 1968, when my younger brother was born.
Six kids! people would say. How do your poor folks manage?
There were a lot of big families in the neighborhood I grew up in. Every other house was a fiefdom, so I never gave it much thought until I became an adult, and my friends started having children. One or two seemed reasonable, but anything beyond that struck me as outrageous. A couple Hugh and I knew in Normandy would occasionally come to dinner with their wrecking crew of three, and when theyd leave, several hours later, every last part of me would feel violated.
Take those kids, double them, and subtract the cable TV: thats what my parents had to deal with. Now, though, there werent six, only five. And you cant really say, There used to be six, I told my sister Lisa. It just makes people uncomfortable.
...
More:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/28/131028fa_fact_sedaris?currentPage=all
The siblings, clockwise from top left:
Gretchen, Lisa, David, Tiffany, Paul, and Amy.
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David Sedaris remembers his sister, Tiffany, who committed suicide. (Original Post)
progressoid
Oct 2013
OP
ScreamingMeemie
(68,918 posts)1. Thank you for sharing this.
Link Speed
(650 posts)2. Thank you
That read took me to a whole lot of places.
progressoid
(49,991 posts)3. Me too. n/t
Egnever
(21,506 posts)4. Very strange read
and not at all about his sister really.