As She Lay Dying

We never got along. It wasn’t so much out and out fights but rather a cold distance. For many years, I thought it was because we were too different. During the too many hospital days and the hospice nights, I thought about it a lot. And I learned it was because we were too alike.

We certainly didn’t seem similar. She was a traditional housewife and liked bright colored clothes with butterfly pins. I was a career-minded single woman with a predominantly black wardrobe and no adornment. She got her hair done every Friday; only a hurricane could keep her from that appointment. I cut my hair when I could no longer see. I couldn’t understand her obsession with cleaning and shopping. She never grasped what a dissertation was or what it was I did at my job. When I published my book, her only reaction was a lukewarm, “that’s nice.”

We had ferocious tempers. You did not want to get either of us mad. And we were mad with each other from my birth because we would not conform to each other’s ideas of what we were to be. It took my faith to help me grow up, to soften me to who she was. And because of that, a miracle took place - she softened to me.

We both wanted only to be independent. Watching her fight against leaning on anyone, I learned how important it was to lean. My first action after getting the phone call from hospice was to lean against a colleague. She would have thought it a weakness, but she also knew she leaned on me. I think that was the worse part of her illness; she had to accept help.

She never told me she loved me until the end. I waited all my life for that to come and it did come – almost too late – but still in time. As always, it was on her schedule. Stubbornness - another shared trait I would prefer not to have but carry in my DNA.

We wanted to do it ourselves. She picked her timetable. When she was ready, she stopped dialysis. We thought she would die quickly but she hung in there. And then she went, not by following the hospice signs of impending death but slipping off alone on a beautiful afternoon. I hope the windows were open to let in the breeze.

A semi colon joins 2 independent clauses into a unified whole. Margie Josephine Pinkston Wintter; Sharon Beth Wintter Wyly. Little, red haired Irish woman, as your husband (my father) of 66 years called you. Peace.