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Want to share your own memories -- your own bulletins from the before-and-after frontier, your own farewell chronicles? Here's the place. Email Anneli your true stories, and she'll post them on this page.
yourfarewellchronicles@annelirufus.com
Check back here for new updates as they arrive.
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From Bob Braxton:
Interesting that after seventeen years they are the same days of the week as when the Sunday my mother called early in the day to report, "I awoke to see your father 'purple' in the other bed. I called my brother, who then called an ambulance, which took your father to the hospital. There is no need to drive here. There is not anything you could do if you did come here."
The next day, Monday, July 11, by the time I got home from work my brother called, "I think you had better come down here (next state, about five hours of driving)."
I ate supper, leisurely. Our 16-year-old son and I packed, taking our time.
Then, as soon as we were ready, we set out, driving directly to the hospital in NC.
When we got to Alamance County and reached the parking lot, a group of my sisters (there are five, two brothers, I am the first-born) were coming out of the building, weeping. "He just died (about 11:30pm)."
When I reached the hospital bed, my brother nearest my age was standing beside the bed. The IV tube, not having yet been removed, was still connected to the vein in my father's arm. Gently and firmly I laid both my hands on his chest, which for quite some time still remained warm; and I continued to stand that way a long, long time.
I think this was the only time since I became an adult that he did not pull away from me shortly after I would do anything more than shake his hand.
I felt calm, yes sad; but I felt as close (perhaps the closest) as I ever did with my father since the time I was a very young child, before I remember his whipping me.
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