My Sister Was on Her Deathbed. She Asked Me to Call a Psychic

When I found out my mother, who had been dead for 12 years, was at the foot of my sister's bed, I was relieved but not particularly surprised.

My mother, Zelda, was everything you might think someone named Zelda would be. She had a big, bold personality. The temperature went up a few degrees when she entered the room. She was the exclamation point at the end of the alphabet — filled to the core with vim and vigor. Never mind the fact that, embarrassed by her name, she preferred to be called "Bonnie," she was Zelda through and through.

She'd always been larger than life, so far be it from her to let a little thing such as the fact that she was dead keep her from my sister when she was most needed.

Three hours earlier, I'd entered my sister Rachel's room in the intensive care unit of Mass