The week before and the week after my birthday have been bittersweet for many years.

The sweet: it's my birthday, which I love to celebrate. It's spring. I'm the only Taurus in my family, which makes me feel a little special. And it's my birthday, which I share with Ella Fitzgerald. I like my birthday very much.

The bitter: bad stuff just happens around my birthday. Of course I know that bad stuff happens around other people's birthdays, it doesn't happen every year and little of it has related directly to me, but naturally I'm more inclined to notice the bad stuff that occurs around the most self-centered day of the year.

What bad stuff, you ask? A couple of minor earthquakes. The break-up of an intense relationship. Waco, Oklahoma City and Columbine. The L.A. riots. The death of my sister-in-law's older sister.

But the earliest that I can remember was also the most shattering for me and my family. Twenty-seven years ago today my older sister was killed by a hit and run drunk driver.

Most of what I'm about to relate was told to me many years later. I don't remember much. I think I've suppressed most of the memories and I'm not quite sure how to bring them back.

April 30, 1973: We were living in Middletown, Rhode Island. I had just turned seven, Dad was on a ship overseas and Mom, who didn't drive and had never been very physically healthy, sent sis Pam and bro Randy to Burger Chef to pick up some dinner for the family. No big deal, really. Though Pam was a month shy of her eleventh birthday and Randy had turned nine earlier in the month, they had made this trip a number of times before. Before leaving Pam hugged Mom and said, "Goodbye." She had never said that before.

Pam and Randy had to cross a busy street, but Pam knew enough to wait until all was clear. So did Randy, but, being a normal nine year old boy, he was impatient. He dashed across the street. Pam ran after him, yelling at him not to do that. Randy reached the other side, turned around, and saw his older sister get hit by a speeding car. He started to run back into the street after her, but a witness grabbed him and held him back. Instead he and the witness, Lori, watched as Pam was dragged a hundred yards by the car before her body broke free of the wheels. The car sped off.

I have a vague recollection of a phone call, and Mom weeping and sobbing, in that horrible way that sucks all breath from your body and leaves you shaking and weak and faint, and the police showing up on our doorstep to take Mom to the morgue. A neighbor watched us, I think, while Randy was still at the police station, telling them what he saw. Again, I'm not entirely sure of my facts.

A few years ago Mom told me what happened when she was asked to what no mother, no parent should ever be asked to do: identify the body of her dead child. Pam lay on the table, no sign left of the sweet, laughing, occasionally frustrating girl she had been. Mom walked towards her, wanting to pick up her oldest child and hold her one last time, to stroke her light brown hair and murmur words of apology, but the police held her back. Why? Why would they deny her such a thing?

Because the friction of Pam's body being dragged across the tar had ripped away her scalp, which was now just sitting on the top of her skull.

Over the next few days Dad flew home and each of us kids were sent to stay with different friends while my parents tried to arrange for Pam's funeral. I stayed with a hairdresser who ended up cutting my waist-length hair to a rather short pixie cut (she asked my permission and, not quite understanding what a pixie cut was, I said yes).

We came back together for a wake, then the whole family drove from Rhode Island to Bay City, Michigan, where Pam would be buried in the same cemetary as my parents' families (her body was flown there). Once there I met all sorts of aunts and uncles and cousins for the first time, as well as my maternal grandparents. We stayed with Aunt Norma, Mom's sister, and played with my cousins.

The funeral was held in Bay City, but none of us younger kids were allowed to go. Just Randy, I suppose for some sort of closure.

I'm sorry. I've been working on this entry for days, but I can only type a few words before the pain overwhelms me. Twenty-seven years later and I'm still crying whenever I think about it. Whenever I think about the pain that my family went through. The years of hurt and guilt and anger engendered by the death of my older sister. Whenever I think about the promising, precious life snuffed out by one irresponsible, reckless hit-and-run driver.

The police caught the woman who killed my sister. Mrs. Walker. Turns out she was the mother of a classmate of mine. A woman so fond of alcohol that she couldn't live without it. So she drove while drunk, and hit my sister in the process, then sped away. Mrs. Walker didn't count on the witnesses who took down her license plate number and gave it to the police.

However, this was 1973, and drunk drivers, including those who killed, got little more than a slap on the hand. Certainly not jail time. After all, the woman made a mistake.

A mistake that cost a little girl her life. A mistake that scarred that little girl's family for the rest of their lives, in visible and invisible ways.

I'm sorry. I don't think I can finish this.

Goodbye, Pam.