Having accepted death long ago in order to be physically and morally free to some extent, I am not crushed by this final sentence of death, at least not yet, and I don’t think it is denial. Perhaps the sacrament remained, but it was between her and her beliefs now: care wasn’t, in my view, owed to me anymore. What we were had been dissolved, as if by radiation or the action of an acid. It represented a new state, in which, in a sense, we did not exist. And I felt that if I had AIDS, she had the right, perhaps the duty, to leave me my having that disease suspended all contracts and emotions – it was beyond sacrament and marriage. She cried when she learned that she was clear of the virus she said it depressed her to be so separated from me. And I was grateful that I could indulge my cowardice toward death in terms of living for her. But my not caring if I lived or died hurt Ellen. When you learn you’re fatally ill, time becomes very confusing, perhaps uninteresting, pedestrian.
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