Epilogue by Anne Roiphe

Author:Anne Roiphe [Roiphe, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 0061254630
Google: L3aUP0pRj6cC
Amazon: B001E70RV0
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2009-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

and a half, as if death itself were pushing forward, insisting on its rights. She soon lost her speech and I could see the terror in her eyes. My father ordered a speech therapist to teach her to speak, to learn the letters of the alphabet again. This was done so that she wouldn’t know she was dying. But she was not fooled. I could see it in the way she turned her head away from the therapist, the way she used her good hand to sweep off the bed the crayons and the paper the lady had brought.

I missed the exact moment that she died but came a half hour later. I could see that life had gone, that her skin was a different texture, that her eyes were sinking back into her head and that she seemed to be a bluish color and her bright red nails—the manicurist had come the day before—seemed too bright, too loud, for the body that was shrinking into itself right there before my eyes.

It took me months to understand that the tragedy was her life and not her death, which had been without pain and had not caused years of suffering. It took me months to understand that there was nothing unusual in her dying. Yes, it was too soon, she was still young enough to have enjoyed so many things, but the cemetery where we buried her, on a hill overlooking the swift-moving Hudson River, was dotted everywhere with stones. My experience could not be unique. I put a stone on her grave. I grew up.

But now with H.’s death I find I am thinking about her again. Her cigarette in her hand, her eye makeup running down her cheeks, her mystery novels on her bed, the crossword puzzles she could do in moments, the way she smelled of powder and sweat and scented soap and her eyes would swell and the skin beneath them puff up when she

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