Tolstoy and the Purple Chair Read Online Free

death to my children without taking away their innocence? How would any of us ever be able to go back out into the world and live, smile, talk, plan ever again?
    The questions formed in my mind, and no answers came. Piling up, one on top of the other, the questions came down heavier and heavier until my head ached and my back bowed from the weight. The questions dug in deep, anchoring me to the fact and to the sorrow of losing my oldest sister.
    Sorrow for me became the ceaseless pain of knowing I could not protect my sister from death. All I wanted was to be the one who knew: “Let me be the one who knows!” I wanted to be the one who bore the death, and leave all the others, Anne-Marie included, free to go on.

Chapter 2
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    Words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.
    CYRIL CONNOLLY,
    The Unquiet Grave
    AFTER ANNE-MARIE’S DEATH, I BECAME A WOMAN OF TWO PARTS . One part of me was still in her hospital room, the afternoon she died. The room with its reclined bed, easy chair, TV, and piles of books. The silver tripods holding bags of fluid, painkiller, and horrible brown liquid that drained from my sister’s blocked stomach. The tray overflowing with newspapers and Jell-O packs. The balled-up socks I’d brought in that were too small to pull onto my sister’s swollen and blue feet. The brush with strands of dark blond hair.
    Then there was the other part of me, the part that left the hospital room at a gallop and never looked back, for fear of what I would see. I began a race the day Anne-Marie died, a race away from death, away from my father’s pain and my mother’s sorrow, away from loss and confusion and despair. I was scared of dying, scared of losing my own life. I was scared of what dying did to family left behind, the loneliness and the helplessness. The horrible second-guessing: Should we have tried other doctors, other treatments, other methods?
    I was scared of living a life not worth the living. Why did I deserve to live when my sister had died? I was responsible now for two lives, my sister’s and my own, and, damn, I’d better live well. I had to live hard and live fully. I was going to live double if my sister couldn’t live at all. I was going to live double because I had to die too, one day, and I didn’t want to miss anything. I set myself to a faster and faster speed. I drove myself through action and plans and trips and activities. I wanted to make my parents smile again and keep my kids from thinking about death. I wanted to love Jack and walk for miles with Natasha. I had to make up for everything that everyone around me lost when Anne-Marie died.
    I began coaching Martin’s soccer team, and offered to help out with Peter’s Lego robotics team. I took on leadership of a PTA committee. I set myself on a fitness regime and went to see every doctor with any authority over a region of the body: ear, nose, and throat; vagina and breast; eye; knee (arthritis from an old soccer injury); and colon. Two years before Anne-Marie died, I’d quit working, and there was no way I was going back to work now. I had to be available to everyone in my family, from the youngest (Martin) to the oldest (my father). I tried to anticipate every need and offer all kinds of encouragement.
    Three years at increasing speed, and then I realized I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get away from the sorrow. I could not guarantee my own life span, or anyone else’s. I could not make everyone around me safe and happy. My forty-sixth birthday was looming, and suddenly all I could think about was how my sister had died at forty-six. I had always heard that middle age catches a person wondering, Is this all there is? But for me it was the question posed by my sister’s death three years earlier that banged harder and harder against my brain.
    Why do I deserve to live?
    My sister had died, and I was alive. Why was I