A Slow Demise

“Heather C. Peyton, age 26, died on February 11, after a brave battle with leukemia.  She is survived by her parents, Ronald and Deborah Peyton, her sister Courtney, and her brother Jacob.  A loving daughter, and a friend to all who knew her, Heather will be sorely missed.”

Linda Carroll read the obituaries every day.  This was not her choice.  It was part of her job.  Had been for forty years.  Come in, get a cup of coffee, pick up the newspaper waiting in her office chair, and settle into the morning with two-inch tales of live and death.

When she recognized a name, Linda would roll her chair over to her computer and enter it into the program that would search the records of her firm’s will vault.  After finding the name, Linda would travel down to the firm vault and pull the original will to file with the probate court, thus kicking off the probate administration for the deceased.  Linda’s law firm had been dealing in wills and probate administration for eighty years, and had more wills stored in their fire-proof vault than a single person could manage.  In the early eighties, the firm had fired the three people who had run the will vault until that time, keeping only Linda to run the computerized system, in addition to the other administrative tasks they would give her in order to justify retaining her job.

The obituaries were still her favorite part of the day, though.  Paper spread before her, no one would bother her or ask her to do anything or tell her something urgently required her attention.  In the quiet hours of the morning, when people still moved slowly and spoke in hushed tones, Linda sat back and absorbed the parade of lives in black and white. 

Sometimes the obituaries were sad, like Heather Peyton’s, a young woman, never married.  Sometimes Linda imagined she could feel the little earthquakes coming from as far as Conroe, or Pearland, or Cold Springs, as the fabric of people’s lives were torn.  She pictured the country spreading out around her like a giant tapestry of people and buildings and trees, and the heard the little ripping sounds, thousands every day, across the country.  Little holes, an absence of a string, leaving people behind to make the new routines and relationships required to mend it.

“Dorothy ‘Dotty’ Levine, age 93, died on August 15 of congestive heart failure.  Dotty was survived by her loving children, Patricia and John, and by her seven grandchildren: Jennifer, Diane, Allison, Jonathon, Katherine, Kevin, and Klint.”

In 2002, Linda stopped taking the elevator alone.  She worked on the fifty-first floor of a glass and steel skyscraper on the edge of downtown Houston, as she had for years.  She hadn’t always had a problem with the height, but after the reports of September 11 – women trampled in the stairwell of the towers, unable to move fast enough in their heels and skirts to make it down from the higher floors – she began to fear that she would die at work in some fiery disaster.  For months she had nightmares about the building catching fire and falling to the ground, with Linda trapped inside watching the ground grow closer and closer as gravity pressed her against a window on the fifty-first floor.

When the elevators began shaking and stalling in the spring of 2002, Linda’s fears shifted their focus and began to center on death by elevator.  She imagined herself plummeting toward the ground, story after story passing her by as she crouched alone in the elevator hurtling toward contact.  Every morning her knees would shake as she approached the elevator, and she would stand outside their open doors, waiting for a person to come and ride with her.  At least if they fell, she would not die alone.

“Jason C. Sneed, Jr. is dead. He had a sharp mind, and a sharp tongue. He was beloved by several, and those of us who loved him all felt the bite of his wit from time to time, but we tried to forgive him.”

In 2005, Linda stopped taking the stairs.  She was ten years away from retirement still, and the doctors said her bones were strong, but her mother and grandmother had both died after falls that broke their hips.  And when Linda passed between floors at work, she could see herself tripping on a step and falling down the stairwell, hitting her head on the cement steps as she tumbled down.  She could hear the crack of her skull, feel the disorientation of her head landing below her feet, her hip jutting into the open space between the stairs, her arm dangling below her head.

After a while Linda couldn’t go up and down the stairs without getting dizzy.  She’d catch a glimpse downward through the space between the cement slats, seeing flight after flight of stairs that seemed to spiral up and down forever, and her ankles would feel weak.  Linda began to travel between floors sparingly, always pulling someone away from their desk to accompany her in the elevator.

Her co-workers laughed at her.  They teased her about her fear, they threatened not to come and retrieve her when she went to another floor, but Linda did what made her feel comfortable.  She didn’t let them bother her.  The only thing that bothered her was the transit.  Going to or coming from.  That’s where the danger lived.

“Evelyn Perry, 64, passed away on November 23.  She is survived by her daughter, Carlene Perry, and her granddaughter, Ava Perry-Golden.  A memorial will be held for Evelyn December 5 at 6:00 p.m.  The family asks that donations be sent to the Houston ASPCA in lieu of flowers.”

In 2010, Linda stopped driving.  She could drive. Her arms and legs were strong, and unlike many of her friends in her church group who continued to drive, Linda still had perfect vision (with the aid of bifocals).  But the traffic in Houston seemed to be getting worse by the day, and the honking horns and near misses had begun to make her anxious.  Linda panicked every time a car came close to hitting her, and this happened fairly often.  For a while Linda had a friend drive her to work, a calm friend who let Linda chatter about anything she was thinking, so that Linda didn’t have to focus on the drive.  But when her friend got sick, Linda opted for early retirement.

Linda Carroll died on January 10, 2011, killed by a brain aneurysm.  That day, there was no one on the fifty-first floor to read the obituaries.  But the wills were in the vault and the phones were answered and business went on all the same.  And Linda Carroll never knew she was dead.