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Endings and Beginnings
Sometime after midnight, I finally fell into an exhausted, drugged,
but uneasy sleep. When Jeanne, my aide that night, tapped me
lightly on the shoulder at 2:00 a.m., I was instantly awake. I knew
before she spoke.
“Susan,†she said gently, “he’s gone.â€
In one moment, I was out of bed and down the stairs. I don’t
remember exactly what I felt in those seconds— mostly, I think,
numb, as if I had been stunned by a hammer.
In the lower bedroom, my husband James, gray, gaunt, and
motionless, lay on his hospital bed. Even though Parkinson’s had
begun its slow destructive work almost fourteen years before, I
had never thought James— who, at eighty- five, had still managed
to keep a gleam in his eye— seemed shockingly old. Now he did.
He looked much as I had left him two hours before, his mouth
wide open, jaw dropped, as though he were fighting to breathe.
But he was not breathing anymore. He was motionless. When I
reached to touch his face, it was still hot with fever
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