Though there is some uncertainty in the date (June 6th is the date on the death certificate), today is the day on my calendar for remembering the death of my husband-equivalent, Jacques Transue, who died ten years ago after twelve years of terrible decline from radiation-caused dementia. There’s a lot I could say about Jacques, our life together, and the appalling course of his death — a posting of mine on aphasia links to a brief medical history here and to notes on Jacques’s linguistic abilities from 1998-2002 here, and has some telling of the last things he was able to say — but here’s a story about his final days.
The miracle of those last days was that, through a complex history that isn’t relevant here, my grand-daughter Opal was conceived then. When Jacques’s family heard the news that our daughter Elizabeth was pregnant, they were delighted; his sister-in-law Virginia said at the time, with pleasure, “In the midst of death we are in life”.
(#1)
