GOOD FRIDAY is normally a dark, grief-stricken day. In my family history, one Good Friday stands out as sadder than all others.

I had a great aunt, Ann, who was completely deaf from early childhood. She was in her early twenties. After having attended college for a year, Ann was resigned to living at home with her widowed mother. She helped my great grandmother care for her elderly father, known by my mother as Grandfather Rafferty.

Grandfather Rafferty had a long white beard. On the afternoon of Good Friday 78 years ago, he was in the parlor smoking his pipe and Ann was upstairs. No one else was at home. Grandfather Rafferty fell asleep in his chair with the pipe still in his mouth. His beard caught fire. He presumably called for help but Ann could not hear him. He died the next day.

Ann was overcome with guilt. She kept thinking of how he had called out to her. My great grandmother stayed with her at night in the same bedroom. In the days after her father’s death, she was worried about Ann, whose remorse was probably enhanced by the isolation of her deafness. Despite my great grandmother’s vigilance, three weeks after Grandfather Rafferty’s death, Ann rose in the middle of the night and killed herself with gas fumes from the kitchen oven.

My grandfather, who was a physician, was especially upset. He felt he should have known how serious Ann’s depression was and done something about it. He felt sad and guilty about it for many years.

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