Good afternoon.
This is the eighth anniversary of the death of Gregory. It is his official date of death, although he died about ten or so, the night before. It took hours to get the proper people here to have him declared deceased. So this is the date.
I was asleep in the room at the time he actually breathed his last, just a couple of feet away. He had asked me not to go to sleep but I was anticipating a full day of work the next day, and we had two nurses with us. I told him I had to rest and would see him in the morning. I think he knew that I would not.
I'd scarcely fallen asleep on the sofa, there, when one of the nurses, said, "Ma'm, wake up. I think he has passed. He is not breathing."
Indeed, it was true. He was not breathing. We listened for his breath, for his heart. Nothing. His body had shut down.
It was time. His body had had a long travail, and of the travails of his spirit I can hardly think. It was time; God said so.
We took his ashes to Texas first, but when it became apparent to me that Theodore had no intention of ever moving from here, we had his ashes sent back here and they lie encrypted in the back wall of St Paul's Cathedral, near the main aisle and the font, and underneath the Rose Window. I think Gregory would have liked that as a final resting place.
I wonder, why did he live, and why did he die? Which leads to the question for all of us. Why do we live, and why do we die? What lives, and what dies? What remains? I like the idea that his breath was drawn back into the great breath of Watan Tanka, the great creator. "Gregory is with God," said our Episcopal priest, when I wondered back then eight years ago....For us here on Earth, there remain precious memories, that's for sure. YAZZYBEL
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