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Short-Lived

Bill Tope

When my sister died, a year ago,
there wasn’t much left of her. Georgia’s
life-long battle with alcoholism had
taken its toll and after the last-minute
surgeries there was little remaining of
her liver, stomach and kidneys. Or her
spirit.

Most profoundly affecting her at the end
was dementia, the Alcohol-Related Brain
Damage. (ARBD). Chronic malnutrition
from flights into the gauzey clutches of
repeated, extended benders, resulted in
Korsakoff’s Syndrome, and a general
diminished capacity to cope with everyday
tasks.

When she was young, Sis was a beautiful
girl and full of fun, but a three pack a day
cigarette habit and a fondness for the
bottle worked their evil magic on her.
I only drink beer, she’d protest, as though
that variety of alcohol didn’t count. But her
liver didn’t know the difference.

She was constantly partying. We had both
received an annuity which precluded any
need to earn a living. And those idle hands....
Where would it all end, I often wondered.
But she’d seemed indestructible. Therapy,
interventions and the like—she wouldn’t
countenance it. Though my family and I did
try.

Georgia was headstrong: she refused to
renounce her freedom, change her ways.
Then eighteen months ago, her never-
ending binges came to a screeching halt.
I received another phone call from the police;
they told me that Sis had been found
aimlessly wandering the streets, uncertain
of where she was or how she got there.
Now this was something totally different.

I immediately obtained POA and had her
admitted to a health care facility. But
despite heroic efforts, she lasted less than
half a year longer. While in the facility, she
received not a visitor, nor a card nor a
flower; no well-wishers from the crowd for
whom she was always buying rounds—the
life of the party,

Same thing with the funeral; no one showed.
I buried her in the family plot, next to Mom and
Dad, many years before her time. They say
we make our own beds; I don’t know if that’s
true. Georgia lived a long, long life in just 42
years.

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