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Show i?IS After our prayer, AuntSarahhugged me to her soft breast. As always, she smelled of lavender and peppermint. "Oh, Jeannie." She muffled a sob in my shoulder. "He was ready to go," I whispered, clutching her, clutching words. "He knew he was going. I watched... and I saw..." She nodded. "And how mercifully! Think, Jeannie, what a blessing!" She dabbed at my eyes, then at hers with a flowered hankderchief, then held me again. I remembered her strong, fleshy arms around me just before we fled to Mexico, how my small body had sucked courage from her promise that we would be reunited. I wanted that reassurance now, an active faith that we would be together again. "But those who're left behind...so many need him," I began. She put a hand to my lips. "He died with his boots on, Jeannie. . .taking care of the sick, helping people right up to his last moment." I bit my lip and nodded. She was struggling to make sense of it herself. She didn't understand my fear of eternal loneliness. "He wouldn't have had it any other way," she whispered. "He died the way he would have chosen to - a martyr to his cause. What more could anyone ask?" But tears still streamed from her - - "-eyes, and I knew that her words were not quite enough to restore her reality, the routine of counting on his general presence day by day. Even though many of the family problems would likely decrease now that he was no longer there to be argued over, he had been all the family she had for so |
