For the Record

I was wrong. For several weeks after the death of my sister a year ago today, I didn't know the cause of her death. Recklessly, I speculated on this blog that she may have deliberately taken an overdose. I had no intentions of impugning my sister's name or her legacy, and whatever indications may have led me draw such a conclusion, I merely wanted to know the truth.

This is as much as I know. A friend stopped by her apartment in Anchorage to drop off some groceries. Because there was no answer to hs repeated knocks on her door, he went to the apartment manager who had the authority, and a key, to enter her apartment. My sister's body was found on her living room floor with the telephone in her hand. I learned later that her phone had been disconnected on the 24th. A neighbor told my sister's friend that when he saw her three days before, her face was "black and blue" and that earlier on the day she died, he responded to cries of help from the parking lot where he found her in her car, without enough strength to get out and make it back to her upstairs apartment.

Her death was from "natural causes." She was just 65 years old. She had been diagnosed a few years before with artereo sclerosis and had been waiting to have an outpatient procedure performed that would implant a "stint" in one of the clogged arteries to her heart. Because she had no health insurance, she sought various ways of paying for the procedure. Since she turned 65 in July, I expected her to apply for medicare. She never told me if she applied or not.

Based on this skimpy information and from what her neighbor had reported about her face being black and blue, my entirely uneducated guess is that my sister likely died of congestive heart failure. And possibly a broken heart as well. What continues to amaze me is that a woman who had had five husbands still managed to die alone. She was waiting for me to come home, and had prepared a place for me on my return. She waited as long, longer, than she could. And a year ago her wait was finally over. I will be sorry for this for as long as I live, but at least I have the luxury of being sorry.

One of the reasons why I miss my sister so much is because every time I encounter something beautiful - a song, a film, a poem - I can no longer share them with her. As happens occasionally, I will hear a lovely piece of music and I will immediately think of her, of how she would've been moved by it as much as I. But since she is no longer able to listen to it, I think to myself that I am her ears, that I am enjoying something beautiful for her.

I am not the fatalist that Thomas Hardy was. But his profound fatalism prevented him from ever forgetting the dead. One of his greatest poems on this theme is "During Wind and Rain." 

During Wind and Rain

They sing their dearest songs --
He, she, all of them -- yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face....
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss --
Elders and juniors -- aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all --
Men and maidens -- yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee....
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them -- aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.


We are so close to Hallowe'en, a day that is supposed to be for the people we have lost, every one of them. Next Tuesday, I will expand on the subject.