[Oe List ...] Kate St. Clair

[Shelley Hahn]

Andy St. Clair has asked me to post to the OE list the message that he posted 
to the 2nd Generation email list last week.  This message appeared in the wee 
hours of Thursday, Feb 17th, but I think Kate actually passed away on 
Wednesday the 16th.

If anyone would like to contact Andy, his address is 7820 N 6th St, Phoenix 
AZ, 85020.  I don't know Alex's address, but I'm sure Andy would share any 
messages with his brother.

Here is Andy's message:

> My mom died today. She had been very sick since the beginning of the 
> year- first a diagnosis of emphysema (news she celebrated, in her Kate 
> way, with a cigarette), then a heart attack in September, and lastly a 
> stroke this past Thursday.
> 
> She had been on hospice care for the last month at a private care home 
> about 100 yards from my house. My boys, Mitchell and Tom, got to see her 
> before we lost her to the morphine haze. She squeezed their hands in her 
> one good one. Then she just sort of disappeared into the fog. That was 
> Friday. Mitchell came over and played her a song he remembered from my 
> dad's funeral on his guitar and they both brought her a valentine 
> balloon which was still floating brightly and hopefully in her room 
> today. She held on for the week without food or water, subsisting on the 
> morphine and my reading aloud to her. The Lord of the Rings. I am not a 
> bedside-vigil kind of guy, but it turns out I kind of am.
> 
> Kim asked me last night if I had ever told her she could die, that it 
> was okay to go. I hadn't. It seemed so obvious. Like, how couldn't she 
> know? I mean, everybody else knew it was time, right? But I went over 
> today and told her. She believes in heaven, so I believed with her and 
> told her dad was waiting, your love is waiting. Go. We'll be okay. The 
> boys will be okay and they'll remember you. I remembered what Mark Doty 
> said to his lover when his lover was dying- all the love in the world 
> goes with you. All the love in the world, I told her. And she died. 
> Damn. She died less than an hour later.
> 
> It was just me and her. I held her hand. Her breath came less frequently 
> until it stopped, and I held her hand and watched the pulse in her neck 
> slow, flutter, and stop.
> 
> All the love in the world.  That's what I have.
> 
> Andy


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