You were a matron, aged 60; the mother of sons; the estranged wife of one man; a sister; a colleague; a friend. On a Spring night at ten p.m. an undisclosed person shot you; three times in the back and stomach. You were left in the rutted driveway. Your small body in ruins; you felt your life-blood seep away into the earth under you; you were in pain and disbelief at what had happened to you. Did you recognize a potential assailant and make a run for safety only to find yourself fallen, broken, in pain both physical and psychic?
Your estranged husband, found over your splayed body, answered in monosyllabic grunts to the police who came, to the paramedics who tenderly collected your broken body. You were taken to hospital; he was locked up in jail and charged with manslaughter. Your bereft children went through the motions of their lives, afterward, in shock, sadness and dismay. Your siblings, extended family, work colleagues and many friends learned of this tragedy, in increments of information and misinformation and conjecture.
You died in your hospital bed days later, never having recovered consciousness after surgeries. The welcomed death in old age has not been your lot. We all grieve the circumstances of your passage from this life. What is left behind is confusion, sadness with the vagaries of lived life and of the unexpected. What none of us think is possible or probable; the unthinkable violent tearing one from life’s stream.
We grieve for you and for your unexperienced passages of life still to be. We grieve for your children; for the unendurable confusion for them which results from the manner of your death.
Your smile and characteristic wave in greeting is not what we will ever experience again in our lifetimes. The cadence of your speech, the shrug of your shoulder, your energy and enthusiasms have passed into the house of memories in which you now occupy one room. If we put our ear to the door, it seems we can hear your voice, raised in conversation, laughter, quiet complaint. In our imaginations we can conceive your planning a trip, signing documents, singing in your car with its open windows and the stereo blaring, selecting clothes for an outing which make a statement of your adventurousness. We can almost hear you encouraging your children to grab life by the scruff of the neck and live it. We hope they will always hear you, remember you on those years-ago sunset evenings as you all weeded your vegetable garden.
Rest in peace, my friend.
how to survive suburban life 
June 29, 2008 at 5:03 pm |
Very touching story and as usual very heartfelt and well written!
June 29, 2008 at 10:25 pm |
This piece cut through to a deep place G. The emotion and power of the content is delivered with such grace and strength of your language. Thank you for this.
July 1, 2008 at 2:24 am |
I’m so sorry, G., for the loss and the violence of it. I’m just so very sorry. Bless her heart.
July 1, 2008 at 6:51 pm |
Oh, my God, this made me cry. Such a beautiful expression of loss, a life lived, the description of a unique individual in her gestures, her connection to her family and friends, the cutting off of the years ahead which younger people may not realize can still be long and fulfilled after sixty. And such a violent way to die, just sickening and so, so sad and pointless. I feel for you, G. Grief is so hard.
July 2, 2008 at 5:57 am |
Nita, deborah, ybonesy and writer reading – thanks for your kind comments.
it seems to me that death does not so often happen to many people we know, especially when we are younger. however, as we age, and our age-mates begin to die, incredulity at losing them unepectedly, onset of the sadness that we cannot ever again experience these persons’ vitality, companionship is something one may never be ready for. The main thing I am struggling with is the arbitrariness with which and when lives end. For certain, my friend’s children are faced with much agony in their lives for many years to come – this is so difficult to countenance given the grievous mannner of her death. G
July 4, 2008 at 3:07 pm |
Shocking, senseless and so very sad.
July 5, 2008 at 12:32 am |
A shocking event, what grief! My heart goes out to you for the loss of your friend, and in such a tragic way. You have written a sublime elegy in her honor, on the event of her death. When death becomes concrete it freezes the heart.