She isn’t gone yet and so I speak when I can in the present tense.
She could in her day stand on stage and command. Not with the relentless aimless ego of so many performers, but with the truly unnerving release of inner forces that is rare and astonishing to bear witness to in person. In a room she not only doesn’t command the space, she tends to be the quiet one. It always was as though she knew what she could do, but realized early on that being a drama queen was a house of cards…but being a dramatic force in the right time and place might have some virtue. I have been told the story many times, of her performance in an opera in college. “Frankenstein”. She dies at the end, stabbed again and again to death as she sings. Her fiancee couldn’t bear to watch it, for it was such a brilliantly contrived and horrific death.
I only watched her sing once, and this was a year or two ago in my home. She had been fighting cancer for about 9 years at that point, and her vocal powers were largely shot. A reunion of old college friends was organized around her and her family’s visit up from the Midwest. She was cajoled into doing some singing, and as I sat there and watched, I beheld a transformation. Not in her body, which was ravaged, but in her face and eyes. It was mesmerizing, and elating, and humbling. A truly great gift.
She sat across from me for years, and that is how I got to know her. She was my wife’s college roommate for years, then apartment-mate afterwards. She wound up in New York as well as my wife, and so the friendship continued. I met her through my wife, and met her soon-to-be husband as well. She sat across from me for years, and was without any doubt in my mind the most tolerant spades partner I could have ever wished for. ( Although I have to admit that I’ve had one other spades partner more recently who gave this friend a run for her money in terms of patience, caring and grace ) She can count cards, and hold all shown in her head and plot, and know what would be thrown next. I can barely understand strategy and am the classic adult ADD- card counting is hardly my forte’. She is so patient with me, saying again and again over the years as I’d throw down a card that would spell certain doom, " Toons, do you reaaaallllly want to play that card??" Then she’d laugh as I’d get bonked by either her husband or my wife, playing demonically against us.
She can speak volumes with a glance. Nice with a card partner, better with a friend to see that quality and enjoy it. She is so very no-nonsense and logical, sensible and thrifty. Frighteningly intelligent, she comes from a Palo Alto family of educators.
By sundown I will be sitting with her, along with the rest of my family and hers. I am bereft. How do I say "Well, goodbye, I love you " to someone? ( in the fine traditional sense of loving someone you have been friends with for 20 years. )
I’ve seen violent death a few moments after the fact. I’ve watched it once or twice too, up close. I’ve watched friends and loved ones slip slowly away, in terrible increments. None of it is bearable but yet that’s life and so it must be borne. How odd that one bears a newborn baby, but death is borne.
My Mom is a retired Hospice Nurse. I will call her today as we drive the last leg of the trip there, and talk to her and get some help. Or advise, or guidance of whatever one would call it. Hospice is already involved, in a week or two, three at best, she will be gone.
I am feeling very much that there are no words for her. I always like to think I have the words no matter what, but I cannot fathom a moment with her that wouldn’t sound trite. If she is not too glazed over with the Morphine she will see in my eyes the pain and love, the anger and loss and fear for her.
It’s all I can hope for.
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