“Alive” (a letter to Neil Gaiman)

Dear Neil,

The odds that you are reading this are slim. Very slim. I probably won’t finish writing it, but if I do, I almost surely won’t be brave enough to send it to you. If I am uncharacteristically brave, what then? I send it, and it never reaches you; it slips between the cracks of your magically real life and goes to Neverwhere — or wherever unread emails go to die.

So why am I writing it at all? I’m writing it for me, because I have to. But please be patient with me. It’s hard to type through the tears.

Two days ago, my brave, compassionate, quietly kick-ass sister Gretchen died. One minute she was Alive… and then she was Dead. My beautiful inside-and-out sister was beautiful no longer.

Death is not beautiful.

I think — how can I know? — that she didn’t tell us there was no hope for her…