The Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., is a festive place during the holidays. Live Christmas caroling fills a small but grand lobby every night as guests and locals like me gather around a 20-foot Christmas tree with blinking white lights and hundreds of shiny, gold ornaments. Nightly performers range from professional groups, such as the Congressional Chorus, to local school and community choirs. This evening, it’s the Washington Chorus, and they are wonderful.

This holiday season, like too many other families who have lost someone to drugs and alcohol, I am missing my little sister Jenny, who died in 2017 from prescription opioids. She was 44 years old, a college graduate, and a middle-class, suburban mother who hid her disease from us for years. Since her death, I have tried to be grateful during the holidays, but right now, hearing the Christmas music, I feel a tremendous sadness. The holidays bring back memories of growing up in Buffalo, New York: Three young sisters shoveling snow in our driveway with my father in his Buffalo Bills hat and each of us armed with small red shovels.