The evening of April 9, 2017, I got the call I'd been expecting, that I knew was coming: A representative of the hospice society that had been watching over my dear love Carolyn Kelly called about 10:30 PM to inform me she had died about twenty minutes earlier. In a sense though, she had died a week or more earlier when she could no longer speak or open her eyes and there was no reason to believe she even knew where she was. She had finally stopped breathing around 10:10 that evening.
For some reason, I asked the man who phoned me, "How many of these phone calls have you made in your life?" His answer was "More than you could possibly imagine."
He asked if I needed anything. I'm not sure what he was expecting in the way of an answer but I asked, "When will they be taking her out?" For 10+ months, Carolyn had been living in an Assisted Living Facility and had become friends with all the other women — for no particular reason, they were all women — who lived there, all of them older than she was, all of them probably there for what remained of their lives. He said their representatives were en route to the home to — there is no nice way to say this — remove the body. They'd probably be there around 11.
He asked, "Do you want them to wait so you can say goodbye?" I told him no, I'd said my goodbyes…several times, in fact. I said, "I'm sure they'll do this but if you speak to them, tell them to please do it quietly. Everyone there is probably asleep now. I wouldn't want them to be awakened and see the body being taken out. The other residents there will find out tomorrow morning, I'm sure."
Which they did. The next morning, my assistant John and I went to the facility to begin cleaning out Carolyn's room, aided by a friend of hers who'd volunteered to help out. Everyone who resided there stopped me to tell me they'd heard over breakfast and wanted me to know how much they'd loved Carolyn and would miss her. I think I told most of them, "You and me both."
Until very close to the end, Carolyn had a way of brightening up any room she entered…even a place like that place. When I took her off the premises for medical attention or a good meal, she'd always ask to stop at a grocery store — or better still, a farmers' market. She'd buy a big bag of apples or pears of whatever looked especially fresh and when she got back to the Assisted Living place, she'd pass them out to all the residents.
One time she did that, a woman in her eighties thanked her for the offer of an apple but said, "My teeth aren't working. There's no way I could eat an apple." That didn't stop Carolyn. She went down to the little kitchen that fed the residents there, borrowed some utensils and, fifteen minutes later, presented the lady whose teeth weren't working with a dish of freshly-sauced applesauce. My friend Carolyn just always did things like that, even for people she barely knew.
It's been seven years since we lost her and at one moment, it feels like a very long time. Then at another, it feels like last week. I have done what I think is the only sane thing to do after a loss like that. I have rearranged my life without her but I have never forgotten about her, nor will I ever. That's what she wanted. That's what I want when I go. It's what everyone should want.