![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am standing back from the Ferris Wheel, watching the Carney and the woman with her finger pointing in his face. She is shouting at him, more confrontational than anyone I have ever seen facing down Death.
"If you think I'm leaving without my baby, you're dead wrong," she shouts at him, seemingly unaware of the irony of her words, and then she lets loose with a string of epithets. She is screaming, crying, cursing, banging on his chest with her fists, until he takes her in his arms and whispers something to her. I've never seen him actually touch anyone like this before, or anyone fall against him and sob like she does. He holds her tightly, tenderly, whispering words I can't hear, stroking the back of her hair with the hand that is not holding his cigarette.
I stand back and watch as if frozen. I am stunned. Since Cameron's aneurysm in 1993 I have written his epitaph a thousand times in my head, waiting for that phone call from Tennessee; waiting to hear that, after all these years in limbo he was finally gone and we could grieve for him at last. I've steadied myself to be there for Leslie when she finally lost her son, to comfort her and help her through it.
"You're like my little sister, Nina," she's told me on so many occasions, "You don't know how much you mean to me. I love you so much."
I was prepared for Cameron's death. Leslie's death, however, has blindsided me.
( A New Ass-Kicking Angel stomps through the Pearly Gates )
"If you think I'm leaving without my baby, you're dead wrong," she shouts at him, seemingly unaware of the irony of her words, and then she lets loose with a string of epithets. She is screaming, crying, cursing, banging on his chest with her fists, until he takes her in his arms and whispers something to her. I've never seen him actually touch anyone like this before, or anyone fall against him and sob like she does. He holds her tightly, tenderly, whispering words I can't hear, stroking the back of her hair with the hand that is not holding his cigarette.
I stand back and watch as if frozen. I am stunned. Since Cameron's aneurysm in 1993 I have written his epitaph a thousand times in my head, waiting for that phone call from Tennessee; waiting to hear that, after all these years in limbo he was finally gone and we could grieve for him at last. I've steadied myself to be there for Leslie when she finally lost her son, to comfort her and help her through it.
"You're like my little sister, Nina," she's told me on so many occasions, "You don't know how much you mean to me. I love you so much."
I was prepared for Cameron's death. Leslie's death, however, has blindsided me.
( A New Ass-Kicking Angel stomps through the Pearly Gates )
