My posts dropped off the map due to a lack of finishing novel manuscripts and the stress as my job became a little more than I could handle. I eventually stepped down.
On July 24, 2009, my world became flipped and twisted. The death of a family member is difficult. To find yourself the sole executrix of the estate is a strange territory to the uninitated. To find the body leaves painful memories. Sorting through someone else's debt and life to take a part of it as your own has consumed me for the last eight months. Finally, things are beginning to settle down and the paperwork is a month away from disapearing. I hope.
Guilt. To know I spent an hour and a half that morning typing in edits and writing instead of trying to wake her up. Could have saved her life. Needless to say, nary a word typed.
I began writing a memior of sorts about my experience . Though I do not plan for it to see the light of day, the experience has been thereaputic. I remember the blood already pooling under skin on her arm visible above the sheets (known as hypostasis or lividity) and have recently discovered that this occurs 3 to 6 hours after death (several sources held different finite answers within this range). I discovered her at roughly 9:45 am (or rather, that's when 911 took my call and I had nearly killed myself getting to the phone). By that calculation, she passed away in the hours of 3 to 6 AM. Even if I had jumped out of bed in the morning when I woke and dressed and tried to enter her house, I could not have saved her. My selfishness had nothing to do with saving or not saving her. Knowing that has made a difference.
I have begun to write my novels again.
