Advent 15: Gone

I wrote my sister a letter to tell her about our very sick brother but she didn’t answer me or call him which was more deadly than the last time I wrote to her when she sent back my letter unopened crammed in an envelope with my name written in hard big letters, so angry-looking I felt small and childish like I’d interrupted something important, a discussion she might have been having with a friend on the lounge chairs on her back porch overlooking a valley resplendent with trees and a running creek where in a different time we might have ridden horses, their hooves clicking smartly on the wet rocks.