Betty is a woman on her deathbed. She has lived through the death of her husband and is now days away from joining him. A large part of her husband’s death was his ability to take advantage of cleansing his soul before he dies. He shares with her his deepest secrets so that she can forgive him and he can die peacefully. In hopes of joining her husband she decides that it is time to cleanse her soul to her daughter. She reveals the story of a day and time when racism was a way of life, a day when the whole family goes deep into the forest and watches a public lynching. Her daughter remembered this day and she remembered the lies that her mother told her to try to get her to forget the situation and think it was a dream. Will her daughter give her the forgiveness that she needs or will she die before the greatest gift is given, the ability to die with a free heart and find her love on the other side? (*Character does go back and forth in time so actress will need to be able to play age.)
DI/ Female- Deliverance
- (Scene opens with the sound of a hospital room, beeps of machines that then are swallowed by the sound of heavy, hard breathing. Betty is very sick. She has trouble speaking but can be understood.) No one ever wants to believe that they are lying in their deathbed, but I am, and I know it. The doctor told me yesterday that I might be able to see the sun rise three maybe five more days. As I lay in this bed I think to myself the worst thing about dying is knowing that it's going to happen. I wonder if I would be better off if I had just stepped in front of a moving bus when I first got the diagnosis. Or maybe if I had died years ago when my husband died things would be different. People always said that couples that are in love can't live without each other and that when one goes the other will die soon after. I waited for years to die. Made me think that I didn't love my husband as much as I knew I did. But here I am today thirteen years after I buried my oh so perfect husband Patrick, I lay here on my deathbed, finally. I was able to watch my husband die. Those were the most difficult days of my life. A lot of my family believes that this is the most difficult thing I've ever had to go through. But there's some kind of comfort in knowing that I am going to be free soon and I will be back with my love. The most difficult day of my husband's passing wasn't the day that he died it was the day of his confessions. He called me into the bedroom and said that he wanted me to sit on the edge of the bed and hold his hand because he knew that he was going to die soon and he wanted to make sure that he confessed everything to me. The first thing that he said was-