The Violet Hour (37 page)

In his illustrations, he would take the picture of a child flying through the air and make it beautiful; the flying became floating—it is supremely tranquil, graceful, slow. There is an element of mystery suffusing it, a supernatural aura to it, but it is not frightening. The idea of falling or floating out of life is saturated with quiet excitement.

What does it mean for children to vanish or fall out of mundane life? Think of Mickey falling out of his bed, out of his clothes, through the air, past his mama and papa's bedroom in
In the Night Kitchen;
it is a slow, pretty, festive falling he is doing. Think of Ida floating through the air to find the baby stolen by goblins in
Outside Over There
, elegant in the folds of her gold cape, still holding her French horn. Think of the brother in
My Brother's Book
, who also floats naked through the air, to his death, admittedly, but in a graceful way. Think of the naked boy floating upside down through his house in the collaboration with Randall Jarrell,
Fly by Night
. The searing image is recast as a happy exit from the ordinary world.

A boy flying out of life might be a good thing.

Maurice said once in an interview: “I want to be alone and work until the day my head hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput.” And he had discussed with Lynn and his doctor that when he couldn't work or walk his dogs, he would be ready to die.

Now the doctor was honest about his situation: After this second stroke, they could do more physical therapy, more rehab, but there was no chance he could walk on his own or write, and there was a high likelihood that he would have another stroke. He asked Maurice if he still felt the way they had discussed. Maurice nodded.

After that, he went into a large “comfort care” room, which was essentially hospice care.

That last winter he was reading a biography of Blake. “I read Blake because I want to schlep something from him that I can eat raw,
have
,” he said. “My life is my work. Why am I clinging to every word Blake says in this book? I'm trying to suck all his strength out.”

Sendak was particularly enthralled by the image of Blake seeing angels and sitting up and singing on his deathbed: “He's lying in bed, he's dying, and all the young men come—the famous engravers and painters—and he's lying and dying, and suddenly he jumps up and begins to sing! ‘Angels, angels!' ” He loved the idea of this, as if it was an imaginative tour de force, an almost artistic achievement, that he could see angels in front of him.

Once, in the seventies, Maurice was up in the middle of the night, wandering around the living room. Lynn heard him and
came up and asked him if he was okay. He said that he had heard something thumping, and when he went downstairs it was a bat flying around the living room, and the bat had sat next to him on the couch and spoken to him for a long time in German. “Do you believe me?” She tried to laugh it off, but he kept asking. She knew he wanted her to say yes, and so she did. The bat was real to him, he was telling her. How far would she follow him, he was asking, how far would she go in seeing what he saw? He was used to pushing the edges of the imagination. He was used to seeing—in great, gorgeous, physical detail—things that were not there.

In a moment of mischief, he told an interviewer that he wanted “a yummy death,” like Blake's. “He died a happy death,” he explained. “It can be done. If you're William Blake and totally crazy.”

In fact, Sendak had a history of seeing angels. When Maurice was very sick in bed as a child, his father told him that if he looked out the window he would see an angel, and that angel would be a sign he would get better. He stared out the pane, then caught the barest glimmer of one. He told his father he had seen it. That meant he would get better. The idea that you could see an angel, or be an angel, or create an angel, as his grandmother did when she dressed him in white, was part of his family mythology.

Maurice liked the idea of believing, even though he didn't believe. He didn't believe in an afterlife. He didn't believe in God. When an interviewer asked him, at eighty-three, what came
next, he said, “Blank. Blank. Blank.” But he had such an intense imaginative life that he sometimes couldn't help conjuring some sort of world or presence in that blankness. “I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.” And, “I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it's like a dream life.” He draws the bountiful orange waterfall, like trees of the mystical place past life, in
My Brother's Book
. He draws the stage of the Mother Goose World Theatre in
Higglety Pigglety Pop!
His imagination won't stop. When faced with “Blank. Blank. Blank,” the artist in him draws.

Maurice had slipped into unconsciousness. He had said he didn't want visitors, except his very closest friends, and Lynn had kept them at bay, but now that he seemed unaware of his surroundings, friends began to flow in: Twyla Tharp, Spike Jonze, old friends, neighbors, young illustrators, along with Jonathan and Nick and Tony.

There were about twenty people in the room. After a while, Lynn felt that Maurice needed more peace in the room, so she asked them to leave. It was unlike her to ask people to leave—it
was more like her to get everyone sandwiches—but she had a strong feeling that Maurice needed them to leave.

Lynn had listened to his breathing on a baby monitor for the past few years, as he was afraid something would happen to him in the night and no one would hear. She heard his breathing in her dreams, in the background of her thoughts as she lay in bed. She'd absorbed its rhythms as if it were almost part of her, so when it was his last breath she knew. She didn't wait for another breath. She called a nurse. “Did he just die?” The nurse said yes. The time was 2:45
A.M
.