Alexandra, Gone Read Free Page A

can’t stand the idea that after everything she’s been through she should live or die alone.
I know I say it all the time and in all my little notes and letters about this and that, but time is running out and I need you to know that it’s been a privilege to be your wife. And although I feel selfish for all the pain I’ve caused you, I know I’ve brought happiness too, so hang on to that and forgive me because even knowing what I know now I’d love and marry you again. I suppose Leslie would say I was a selfish pig, but I can die with that.
Yours,
Imelda
    Imelda Sheehan died at eight o’clock on the morning of July 12, 1996. She was twenty-five years old. Her husband, Jim, was by her side and holding her right hand, and sitting on the opposite side of the bed and holding her left hand was her sister Leslie. They both felt her slip away at exactly the same time. For Leslie it was familiar: the ocean of grief inside her swelled and rose, but she knew what to do, and so she remained still and allowed the pain to wash over her. For Jim it was so shocking: one second his wife was alive and battling to breathe, the next she was dead and silent. He let Imelda’s hand go and stood up quickly, so quickly that he nearly fell. He steadied and hugged himself. He stood in the corner of the room as the doctor and nurses approached to confirm time of death. Leslie sat with her dead sister Imelda, holding her hand for as long as they would allow her. Jim cried, and his parents, brothers, and friends made a fuss over him. Leslie sat alone and frozen. She knew the physical pain that made her heart feel like it was about to explode and her ears ring until she feared they’d bleed would dissipate in time, just as the tide would turn and with it Imelda would drift farther and farther away until she was a distant memory and it only served to make her loss greater. Leslie had just turned twenty-seven.
    Jim asked Leslie to read at the funeral, but she refused. He asked her to sit beside him in the first pew when she’d attempted to sit at the back of the church. She told him she didn’t want to shake hands with the people whose hands she had shaken so many times before, but Jim was not taking no for an answer, and so she found herself sitting beside her brother-in-law with a heavy heart and an all-too-familiar swollen hand from those whose earnest sympathy ensured they squeezed too tight.
    When the priest asked if anyone would like to speak, Leslie stood up. This surprised her and those around her, especially Jim, who couldn’t even get her to agree to a reading. She found herself standing without reason. The priest asked her to come forward, but her legs refused to comply with his request, and so he waited and the congregation waited, and Jim nudged her and asked if she was all right. What the hell am I doing? she asked herself as she started to move toward the altar, but once she was at the altar and standing in front of a microphone the words came easily.
    “I am the last of the five Sheehans,” she said. “Four days ago there were two of us—me, the middle child; and Imelda, the baby of the family. I should have been next, and not just because I was older but because Imelda was the strong one, the one who embraced life regardless and without fear. Over the years she’s run five marathons in aid of cancer. I didn’t even walk for cancer, not even once—mostly I’ll avoid even standing if I can.” She stopped to take a breath. There was a hint of a titter from the crowd. “She fell in love and married Jim, and she always planned to have kids. Imelda always made plans, and that’s what I admired about her most, because even when she was diagnosed with the same cancer that had killed our grandmother, our mother, father, and sister, she still made plans. She froze her eggs and they bought a house, and when she wasn’t in chemo she traveled. Even when she knew her life was coming to the end, she still made plans. Little plans