Post Script #1: Guilt

I already knew about the regular sort of guilt - the legitimate feelings experienced because of things done or not done, said or not said. I tell myself that we forgave regular guilt on the last night.

However, recently I've began to experience the guilt of simply being alive. I've heard people talk about this (one member of the League of Lost Husbands mentioned it) but I never really understood.

Now when watching TV shows that she liked I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt. Same thing when I fix food that she might have liked (although by the time I started fixing the food she didn't like much). It is not a constant thing and I know that this guilt (unlike the regular guilt for which forgiveness was supposedly offered) is not legitimate; but still.

I suppose it is like surviving a battle where you watch your companion fall and then feel guilty because it was her and not you.

(Of course this battle is not over yet and in the end will claim us all. I suppose there is some solace in that.)

Scattering Ashes

We scattered Brenda's ashes at the site of the old Hatteras lighthouse. I stood in the center of the circle of stones, scooping up handfulls of the dry powder which was blown by the cold wind into the morning sun. Yancie did one handful. Some of that powder whirled back to brush her face.

My sister's ashes were scattered here in the winter of 2000. She and Brenda always liked one another so we imagined that Mickey would welcome Brenda to this place.

Randy, Yancie's husband was there as was Henry, my sister's husband. Henry's wife Grace stayed with Allie and Evan and helped Allie write a story about how the wind tossed her hat into the ocean when she and I were walking by the ocean.



(Henry believes in the possibility of reincarnation which might explain the eight feral cats who greeted us last night in the motel parking lot on our way back from dinner. One of the cats was likely possessed by Brenda and another one by Mickey.)

The Last Night

This is the one I have dreaded to write.

She woke up about 1:00 AM, uncomfortable, not able to breathe. I called the night shift nurse. He asked her if she hurt. I think she said, "No." He gave her a dose of morphine, maybe mixed with Haldol.

We sat beside her bed, him on one side holding one hand, me on the other side, holding her other hand. She asked him if she was dying. Without hesitating, his craggy pirate's face calm but infinitely sad, he said maybe. She stared at him, transfixed. She was still afraid. But something was different. She wondered if she would see a light. He said some people do. Then he smiled and nodding at the large TV in front of her bed, noted that the last thing some people see is whatever is on television at the time.

Her blue eyes, now brighter than I had ever seen them and more alert, darted around the room, seeming to take it all in, as if she was saying to herself, this is where I will die. This is my last view of the world. My sister (who died not far from the motel room on the Outer Banks where I sit writing this) had the same look in her blue eyes not long before she lost consciousness for the last time.

After a while the nurse left us alone. I am not exactly sure what we said. I told her that it was OK to for her to die now but that if she wanted to stay a while I would prefer that. She leaned up from the bed, kissed me on the forehead and said that she loved me. I kissed her on the forehead and said that I loved her. She told me repeatedly to look after Yancie. I said that I would. I think she also said something about Yancie looking after me.