Autumn Harvest

In Pennsylvania, the first autumn color is appearing. The dogwoods are already turning red, and along with the sugar maples' color dotting the mountainsides, are heralding the sure change of seasons.

Last Monday, the 17th of September, I got an email from Jan's nursing home, asking me if I would make a voice recording of me reading that the nurses could play for Jan, as she had been becoming very agitated the last several nights.

They thought it might reassure her, and calm her. I agreed to try, and picked out a book to read; Bernie felt sure that we had to have all the necessary programs already on my big computer to make a CD. All I needed was the time to read, read, read -- which I thought might be difficult considering how rocky my voice sounded after that blasted cold and lung infection, but I was willing to give it a go, and read Jan "The Egyptian," by Mika Waltari.

Good old story-telling tale, that one, and I smiled, thinking of how to inflect the voice of Sinuhe's slave as he expostulates, "Your talk is as the buzz of flies in my ear." I wondered if Jan would chuckle at that phrase.

But when I awoke the next morning, an email from the Area Agency on Aging said simply, "Call us. Urgent."

It was time for the news I least wanted to hear, that I knew was coming, that I had prepared my heart for, but that broke my heart anyway. During the night, my sister Jan had died.

They told me it happened like this: she became agitated in the night, as she had for those "few" nights; but this time, she reached around and yanked the feeding tube from her side. (Remember, since early July she has refused food or drink.) They took her to the local hospital and re-inserted the tube, and checked on her every couple minutes to make sure she was all right, given her heart problems and her breathing problems. She was doing all right, she was doing all right, and then voila! Twenty minutes after the last check, she suffered her fourth heart attack, and this time, was gone, gone, gone.

Wow, who else pulled that stunt? What ever happened to the man who, recognizing he had terminal cancer, stopped eating and drinking, had a feeding tube put down his throat, kept pulling it out, and finally, struggling to stop the ministrations, had a heart attack and died? Oh, him? Jan's and my father? Why, how coincidental, didn't his death happen exactly nine years and 3 days before?

I call myself crazy with grief; I view my thoughts and mutter that I'm letting my imagination mingle with mere coincidences, but frankly, I think Dad was coaching Jan, there in spirit, whispering instructions to her. I'd cuss him out, but I'd then see him pointing a finger of one of his strong but graceful hands at me, saying with all his intensity, "And if you were me, you wouldn't have??"

Well, of course I would have, you old smartass. I've wished Jan could be well and free of her disability since I was old enough to wish anything beyond my own stomach.

One day this past summer, as I was sitting with Jan, she was holding a whispered conversation with an imagined someone. I can't remember what it was that I heard her say -- something about leaving, or getting things in order, or something that bespoke of an ending. "Jan," I asked her, "are you talking to Dad? Is he here talking to you?"

No, I didn't ask it as a way of drawing Jan out. I tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, but I don't doubt that I sounded annoyed. I wanted Jan to have a chance to make friends, have a couple more years of life that comprised more than a chair and a toilet. Jan didn't answer; she clammed up for the rest of the afternoon. Well, she always did like Dad best.

I told the air (the nurse being out of the room for a change) "Dad, knock it off."

Well, I don't think he did, and


now Jan is gone.

Well, gone from me.

My dear, dear sister.

Along with the color that heralds autumn, this is the time of year that the dogwood bears fruit, elongated red berries that will feed birds well into the first snow of winter.

With the change of seasons, the relationship that finally was allowed to blossom between my sister and me has been harvested, a fruit of love and attachment that will have to be my sustenance for the rest of my life when I think of her.

She was beautiful, and I loved her more than I was ever allowed to tell her until this past summer. I have no doubt that she is still beautiful, and now I can tell her how much I love her every day.