"
"Why?" she asked, in deepest earnest. "Because you desired life
instead of death? Because you saw the futility of resistance, and
chose not to follow him into the grave? For I tell you now, and from
the bottom of my heart, that if you had not lived, and come back to
me. . .my own sorry tale could not have gone much further.
"And what of your mother? Do you have any idea what her life has been
like, without you? I will never understand. Why do men call it a
virtue to die, to leave bereft the ones they love, and a weakness to
return to them, and give meaning and substance to their lives?
"Perhaps that is unfair," she continued. "I have seen in the years of
your absence just how bitter, how unanswerable sorrow can be. And I
know that nothing is ever that simple. I only want you to know that
this
pain, this scar, I understand as well as you. I have felt the same
remorse, the same bludgeoning sense of guilt. Until tonight.
"Do you know what he said to me, as he lay dying in my arms? `You have
given my death meaning.' He performed that last act of heroism,
Michael.
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