Yesterday I was interviewed by my insurance company in order to get a new term-life policy. The representative asked me dozens of questions about my health and my family's health. She asked about my parents, and I was happy to say they are alive. She asked about my siblings and whether they were alive.
For the first time I can recall, I said that I had lost my first sister before I was born. (I have a second sister in the land of the living.) She died of a congenital heart defect one week into this world. Her mother, my father's first wife, followed her two weeks later. She died of a broken heart, and my father almost did the same.
I have been asked about the age and health of my siblings on numerous medical and insurance forms, but I have never before answered affirmatively that one of my siblings is dead. If I had not been driving towards a city which contains the graves of some of my ancestors and their lost infants, I might not have thought of her. I never saw my sister. I've seen her grave. But she is my sister, and one day I'll see her. That hope is what the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, is about.
[Above:The Assumption by El Greco, Art Institute of Chicago.]
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