A Sister’s Mission

You write a book, it goes out into the world. You have no idea whom it will reach, and when, and how they will react to it. You hope it finds its way into the hands of someone who finds it useful–as entertainment, of course, and, occasionally, as something more substantial than that. It is a matter of luck that a book sometimes finds its way to someone who, due to her own personal circumstances, is able to find some kind of comfort or familiarity in it.

So I was humbled and moved to come across a blog post by Shevonne Polastre, who lost her sister to alcohol poisoning in January of this year. She happened to pick up No One You Know based upon the synopsis, and found that the feeling experienced by the book’s narrator mirrored her own.

I am constantly comparing my life before and after Kristine’s death. It’s like an abrupt slice of my life. There is no continuum; just a sudden halt. There is also a heaviness in the air now that I can’t escape. Every day I wake up missing my sister, but also my old life. It’s a life that seems like it’s always out of my grasp.

Like the family in the book, we are having a hard time getting closure due to the mystery still surrounding my sister’s death. How can you move on when no answers have been given to you? The only thing that we have been told is that Kristine died due to alcohol poisoning.

Shevonne has started a non-profit organization, Stop Alcohol Deaths (S.A.D.), in order to raise awareness about the dangers of excessive drinking.
You can follow her tweets here.

Over the years, I’ve heard from a number of readers about their own experiences with grief. For a fiction writer, a story is just a story. While writing a book requires a degree of emotional commitment, there is clearly no comparison between writing about grief and living it. As a novelist, I’m always aware of that distinction, and always hopeful that I can write about the fictional experiences of my characters with some measure of truth. Which is why Shevonne’s post meant so much to me, and why I hope you’ll stop by her website, and, if you’re in the D.C. area, participate in the running event that she is planning in honor of her sister Kristine.