Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [133]
This is not how she imagined her middle years, but this is the way it will be.
Something has occurred to her—something transparently simple, something she’s always known, it seems, but never articulated. Which is that the moment of death occurs while we’re still alive. Life marches right up to the wall of that final darkness, one extreme state of being butting against the other. Not even a breath separates them. Not even a blink of the eye. A person can go on and on tuned in to the daily music of food and work and weather and speech right up to the last minute, so that not a single thing gets lost.
She is surprisingly heartened by this thought, and can’t help telling her mother how she feels.
Her mother, Daisy Goodwill, is still alive inside her failing body. Up and down, good days, bad days. She’s doing as well as can be expected, that’s what everyone keeps saying. She could go on like this for years.
CHAPTER TEN
Death
DAISY (GOODWILL) FLETT Peacefully, on —, in the month of — in the year 199— at Canary Palms Rest Home, Sarasota, Florida, after a long illness patiently borne.
"Grandma" Flett was predeceased by her husband, Barker Flett, a respected Canadian authority on hybrid grains. She leaves to mourn her daughter Alice Goodwill-Spanner of Hampstead, England, daughter Joan and spouse Ross Taylor of Portland, Oregon, son Warren and wife Peggy of New York City, and grandniece Victoria and spouse Lewis Roy of Toronto. She was the adored grandmother of Benjamin, Judith, Rachel, Rain, Teller, Beth, Lissa, Jilly, and Emma (?), as well as the loving great-grandmother of Madeleine, Andrew, and Mordicai, and the great-aunt of twins Sophie and Hugh.
A memorial service will be held at Canary Palms Chapel, 10:00. Flowers gratefully declined. Interment will follow at Long Key Cemetery.
Flowers gratefully accepted in remembrance of DAISY GOODWILL FLETT who embraced as well as she was able most growing things gardens children balloons of memory though she feared greatly the encircling shadow of solitude and silence which she came to equate with her own life Daisy Daisy Give me your answer true Day’s eye, day’s eye The face in the mirror is you
"It was in her bedside drawer. This little velvet box."
"What is it? It looks like—"
"That’s what it is. Fingernail clippings. Hers, I assume."
"Christ."
Flett, Daisy (née Goodwill), who, due to historical accident, due to carelessness, due to ignorance, due to lack of opportunity and courage, never once in her many years of life experienced the excitement and challenge of oil painting, skiing, sailing, nude bathing, emerald jewelry, cigarettes, oral sex, pierced ears, Swedish clogs, water beds, science fiction, pornographic movies, religious ecstasy, truffles, Kirsch, jalepeño peppers, Peking duck, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, group therapy, body massage, hunger, distinguished honors, outraged condemnation, who never drove a car, never bought a lottery ticket, never, never (on the other hand)
was struck on the face or body by another being, never once perched her reading glasses (with a sigh) in the crown of her hair, never (for fear of ridicule) investigated the possibilities of plastic surgery or yoga, never gave herself over to the kind of magazine article that tells you to be good to yourself, to believe in yourself and do things for yourself. Nor, though she knew she had been loved in her life, did she ever hear the words "I love you, Daisy" uttered aloud (such a simple phrase), and only during the long, thin, uneventful sleep that preceded her death did she have the wit (and leisure) to ponder the injustice of this.
"A blessing," exclaims the noted Chekhov scholar Alice Goodwill Spanner when informed of her mother’s death.
"My mother’s quality of life