Suddenly I sensed the presence of my wife, departed, but warmer and more loving than ever. Into my mind came a message: "I have come to tell you what I have discovered. Once while I was sick we talked about whether there is anything after this life. I now know that there is, and that it is good."
This manifestation of Hazel's continuing love plunged me into deep thought. Perhaps I was having a mild hallucination. After all, it was only the evening after her death. But I felt little except relief that her long illness was finally ended and that she had been released at last from a body which must certainly have become a burden. I had been an agnostic since my college days and regarded myself as fairly skeptical. It did not cross my mind that the sense of her presence and her love could persist for many months. It would be most vivid in dreams, but would be strong even in waking life. And it would lead to a complete change in my work, my lifestyle and my outlook.
This happened while friends from the local Unitarian church were gathered with me and our son Bob around the kitchen table in what had been the home of three, but was now only that of two. Betty, my wife's best friend had just said that she had been reading the Egyptian Book of the Dead. My guide dog, Sugar, lay beside my chair, and from time to time I reached down and stroked her soft fur. Continuing in thought, I realized that there would be little to do in the house until the funeral. The body had been removed that morning, and the morticians and the church would take care of most of the arangements.
Turning to Betty, I said, "Please call Linda (my driver) and tell her to pick me up as usual tomorrow morning."
"But surely you don't want to go back to work so soon."
"Well, there's nothing to do around the house, and it feels like it's haunted. I'd rather be at work."
This conversation was rather one-sided. For I was deaf as well as blind. While i could speak, the others used a small mechanical typewriter-like devi`ce called a Tallatouch, with a single braille cell, for their side of the conversation. Bob, of course, like Hazel, could fingerspell. For this was 1977, before telephone relays for the deaf were widely available and when personal computers were still the playthings of hobbyists.
The next day surprised coworkers came into my office at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Administrative Computing Center, where I was employed as a computer programmer, to ask me why I had returned to work. When our son Bob had called the previous morning with news of Hazel's death, the boss had given me an impromptu leave of two weeks. My answer was "Well, there's nothing to do in the house, and it's like it was haunted by absence."
Hazel had died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The disease had paralyzed almost her whole body, though she could still fingerspell awkwardly with one hand. Her senses, including her sight and hearing, were not affected.
Twenty-five years later her son Bob, by a previous marriage, would die of the same disease and at almost the same age. He would experience numbnes, though his sight and hearing would also be unimpaired. But on that morning he was a vigorous young man who had been his mother's principal caretaker for the last several months, ever since the physical strain had become too much for me.
As I went about my work, my chief feeling was one of regret for my insensitivity to Hazel's deteriorating condition. Two nights before she had awakened me and asked me to remove one of her blankets. Her skin was hot and her heart seemed to be beating very hard. The illness was affecting her breathing. Weeks later a coworker who was a nurse would explain to me that she proabably had high blood pressure because of lack of oxygen. In the morning i discovered that she had thrown off the other blanket. That was a cold January morning, so I scolded her gently and covered her again. But later she once more asked me to remove the blankets.
After eating breakfast, and before going to work, I came in to give her a kiss. As always, she moved her lips ecstatically, but they were weaker than usual. Even this did not register sufficiently to make me stay home or call Bob. Later he told me that the doctor had put down respiratory failure as the cause of death. That kiss would be my last memory of Hazel as a living person. The next would be returning home and finding a body with no pulse. And the final memory would be touching an ice-cold hand at the funeral.
Nevertheless, after arriving at work I was uneasy. Hazel had refused to go to a hospital, preferring to die at home. Respiratory failure was always a possibility, but nobody knew when it might happen.
Being an agnostic, I did not pray, but lines from Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" kept running through my mind,
Until Marian, the receptionist, came in, clasped my hand briefly, and typed "Bob called and said that Hazel has just died." Bill, the boss, dashed into my office and typed "John, we won't expect to see you here for a couple of weeks." Then a coworker gave me a ride home.
Of the funeral, which occurred a week later, I would remember little. I insisted on giving a speech in which I addressed Hazel as though she were still present, despite the skepticism of many in the group. Afterward the body was cremated. The ashes were returned, of course, but I never could bring myself to scatter them. They were all of her that I had.
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Webminister, I@godtouches.org.
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