They Say It Ain't Easy

Well, it isn't uncomplicated to say good-bye to a friend. (I know, I know. It's a kind of double negative ... but you can ignore that, this once.)

J had been visiting me every week for about ten years and had only recently significantly cut back on his practice of medicine ... J turned 83, this Summer. I don't know that the ten years that we met flew by in a flash like screaming through an abandoned train-stop without even slowing down ... no ... that was more something that came on slowly. J was a private kind of person and warmed up slowly to our meetings. He collected pictures and statues of wolves and, maybe, saw himself less as a member of the pack than as the proverbial lone wolf. Oh, he had children and wives and was much beloved by those people who came to visit us both. Mine didn't know that he came to visit me and since he was a bit older than I am, if they had suspicions, they might have thought that I visited him. I remember one who looked puzzled when I explained that I didn't know how to travel to his office from mine. "He knows exactly where your office is!"

J did, in fact, cease coming to see me about a month ago ... after falling. We Last Quarter types (he was technically what I call an Overtimer ... Over 80, that is) often have something minor ... a fall in J's case ... Harold had what they thought was the flu until someone checked his pancreatic enzymes and found the worst just 4 or 5 days before he died .... Corbett had suffered nonspecific pain before they found nasties in his bones. In J's journey, they found problems in his GI tract .... doesn't matter what they were. I began visiting him in the hospital.

Funny how you know someone in one way and then the relationship changes. I got to meet one of his kids ... actually, I had met one years ago ... I talked more to his partner of many years .... We had talked for all these years mostly about his journey, an internal one .... talked somewhat about mine, too.

Montaigne, the essayist, had begun writing his essays, as I recall, after his friend Etienne de la Boitie had died. They had spoken often about the variety of matters that occasion life and, now, Etienne was no more. I don't know Montaigne's life story any longer (I think I once did) but it seems to me that his and maybe all of our creative bursts arrive after losses ... arise out of the mourning process. The newest issue of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used to categorize human frailties lists mourning as a sickness, if it goes on too long.

Oh! Our silly language. I think of the advertisements that say, for instance:

1) Use this medicine which might kill you but talk to your doc, first ...

or

2) This donation is tax deductible to the full extent allowed by the law.

As the kids say: No shit!

I don't know when sadness about loss is "too much" .... but I'm still, indeed, quite sad even for this man whose time had come and with whom I'd never broken bread.

I bought a copy of that Diagnostic Manual just this week ... the paperback version that was about the size of a harlequin romance. I remember leaving the store and wondering whether I must be very rich, indeed, to pay $74 for a paperback or whether I was just $74 poorer. I won't read what it has to say about mourning; I really don't care and will continue to be saddened over no longer meeting with the crusty but kind old fellow who brought much to many, including me.