Anchorage Daily News

HAINES -- I didn't think I could sleep in a wooden rocking chair, but I must have. I woke with a twitch and heard my neighbor breathing, quietly and slowly. Then he stopped, and I counted: "one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand ..." I got to six one-thousand and was holding my own breath when he finally inhaled again.

I was relieved, and disappointed. It was, we all knew, time for him to go. Letting someone go for good, even when there is no other option, is not as easy in practice as it is in theory.

You may know Don Holgate. You may have met him in this column about 10 years ago. He is my pithy neighbor who could have been on the old "Bert and I" radio show thanks to a dry wit and a New England accent that never softened after a lifetime here.

He is also the neighbor who explained what to do if my water mysteriously shuts off: shoot a .44 Magnum down the well casing to break up the pipe-blocking mineral deposits. His own well is in the basement, so when he did this, it blew up like a geyser, flooding everything until he and his wife, Betty, got it capped. I think I told you that story too.

He was a fisherman and boat builder and the same neighbor who made me a bird feeder out of the materials he used for his crab pots. It hangs from a tree like a big birdcage. The mesh lets the small songbirds in to eat sunflower seeds but keeps the bigger jays and crows out.

When another of our neighbors crashed his plane on the beach one winter afternoon, I called Don (he was a pilot too) before running out with a blanket for the survivors. By the time I post-holed through the deep snow, Don was helping the pilot and his wife and grandson out of the wreck and organizing the fire department to lift the plane's crushed nose and slide the whole rig up to safety. Don observed later that there are two kinds of bush pilots, "ones that have bent a prop and ones that will."

Don is the same neighbor who I helped up recently after he ended up lying in the leaves out back. He had used a new walker to get to an old truck that he hoped to repair. He is almost 80 and hasn't been able to get out much since then.

Now he is under a pile of soft quilts made by Betty, who is stretched out beside him. They have shared this bed for 59 years, and she isn't about to sleep on a cot now.

It is strange, this waiting for him to leave us. It feels more and more like we are opening a door and helping Don through it rather than closing one. As the hours turn into a day, and the day into two, three and four, he gets closer to something we can't see or hear but can feel.

The window above the bed is ajar. We hope the sounds of the stream flowing to the beach and the inlet flowing to the sea might help carry his soul's boat away.

Betty and I talk quietly in the holy darkness. We both wish he could cross over into that other place and come back and tell us what it is like. We listen for his breaths instead and mostly hear their big old Newfoundland panting in the doorway. The new kitten is on the bed but wide awake and watching everything.

Betty didn't plan this home death. The volunteer ambulance crew arrived the night she needed help, when she thought Don might be going for good. Once they got Don stable, they said he might be too weak to survive a Coast Guard helicopter ride to the Juneau hospital. (Haines doesn't have one.) They spoke to Betty and Don like the friends they are, then carefully carried Don back to bed.

A saint of a nurse from the clinic arrived and did the simple things needed to keep him clean and comfortable and assured us we could call her anytime.

A niece and her husband arrived on the ferry from Juneau, and neighbors and the nurse popped in and out. Sometimes we all talked and laughed, sometimes we were still and quiet, and sometimes there were hugs and tears. Near the end, an old friend from back east called. He is not well either and told Don he would be joining him shortly in heaven but he needed a 1,200-foot grass runway to land his Super Cub on. He asked Don to build it for him.

That's when Don slipped gently into that good night. Betty said he must have been waiting for a job to do.

She also decided not to call the ambulance to transport him to the morgue until morning. There was no need to wake the volunteers up, so for a few more hours Don got to be in both his homes -- the one here and the one over there.

But you know, no matter how tender a death is, losing someone you love is like dying a little yourself. It hurts.

Heather Lende lives in Haines and is the author of "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name." She can be reached at heatherlende@adn.com.

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