Yesterday afternoon my wife and I visited a friend on her deathbed, someone I’ve known for thirty years. We had been informed a day or two earlier that her health had taken a turn for the worse. We reached out to her daughter for up-to-date information and realized that she didn’t have long to live. We wasted no time and went to visit her yesterday.
She was a wreck. She was spending her last days in her daughter’s home. She was bedridden, pale, wasted, neither eating nor drinking, drifting in and out of consciousness. My wife made bright smalltalk, showing her pictures of dogs, a common interest. I stood quietly by her bedside, holding her hand. I would be very much surprised if she lives more than a day or so.
Life passes through phases. You learn to walk and talk. You attend children’s birthday parties. You graduate from high school, maybe college. You attend friends’ weddings, then the births of their children.
I have entered the phase of life at which, when friends gather, they talk about their illnesses and you attend friends’ funerals. It is the next to last phase.
Correct for the most part. There is also plenty of talk about grandchildren. The ones I kind of hate are friends with cancers that you know, and they know, are not going to get better and they will soon be dead. Pretty helpless feeling.
Steve