I recently read "Jilting," and thought it was one of the most moving short stories I had ever read.
The section that *got* me was this one:

"She tried to remember. No, I swear he never harmed me but in that. He never harmed me but in that…and what if he did? There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was planted so carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell when she saw it. For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against losing her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the two things were mingled in one and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a minute. Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were jilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it. Her eyelids wavered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her eyes. She must get up and pull the shades down or she’d never sleep."

Oh god! When I read that paragraph, my heart seized up. I instantly thought, "am I going to be an old woman someday, on my deathbed, still in pain over a man from 6 decades before? A man who jilted me?" Of all the things to remember in your final moments on earth, I cannot think of a worse topic. Yet it feels so REAL...I can completely imagine a dying women's fuzzy, weakened mind drifting back to such an event--an event she has clearly tried to suppress in her memory, yet cannot hold back any longer.

Has anyone else read this story? It's quite short, and extremely memorable.
The full text is available at this site: people.morrisville.edu/~whitn...all.htm

I'd love to hear others' reactions to the story!
Also, the story was apparently made into a film for PBS...has anyone seen it?