This is another perspective on my mother's death.

Rita had been saying to me my whole life "I won't be alive much longer" in one form or another. It was part of her drama. We all have our dramas, that was one of hers.

When Rita hit her 70's her tune changed. She no longer talked about her eventual death with the same dramatic flair. She was more pragmatic, understanding that her mortality was more and more imminent.

About 4 or 5 weeks prior to her death, during a phone call Rita told me that she was hearing her name being called and dreaming of loved ones who had gone before her, and she thought her death might be approaching.

We have a fair amount of psychics in the family, and people whose spirituality includes clairvoyance and such, so it was not surprising to me for Rita to be tuning in to her approaching demise.

Two days before Rita died we spoke on the phone and she told me she'd decided she wanted to be buried in the ground in Nevis, not at sea or cremated as she'd previously considered.

This woman knew her time was coming. She would have hated a lingering illness. There is a way in which I have to say, the grim reaper came and took her, she knew he was coming and she was ready to go.

This does not dissipate my concern about a murderer loose in Nevis, but it does "fit" with who Rita was.

-Walter I. Zeichner 9/24/04