Sunday Short: Now We Are Five by David Sedaris

A few weeks after these messages were written, Tiffany ran away, and was subsequently sent to a disciplinary institution in Maine called Élan. According to what she told us later, it was a horrible place. She returned home in 1980, having spent two years there, and from that point on none of us can recall a conversation in which she did not mention it. She blamed the family for sending her off, but we, her siblings, had nothing to do with it. Paul, for instance, was ten when she left. I was twenty-one. For a year, I sent her monthly letters. Then she wrote and asked me to stop. As for my parents, there were only so many times they could apologize. “We had other kids,” they said in their defense. “You think we could let the world stop on account of any one of you?”

How do you deal with the death of an estranged sibling? That's essentially the question posed in David Sedaris' rather brilliant new essay Now We Are Five. In many ways, this mirrors the plot of The Big Chill, that sense of sharing grief in the guise of a holiday, only the reality of it makes it so much more poignant. It's a pretty spectacular piece of writing.

You can read 'Now We Are Five' over on The New Yorker website here.