My friend's wife has not yet passed away, since my post not long ago.  I saw him today for coffee, it has been ages, and it was good to chat.  About that, about life, about work, about everything.  Free to speak, he picked me at the office and we just drove and drove until he found a coffee shop he really liked.  I remember that, a drive we took once when he was dashing and 21 and I was in college.  A hot summer night, a convertible, and no place in mind.  The cafe was nice inside, two mochas and a lemon square, and peaceful.  

He wasn't prepared for this, he said.  The car ride was full of small talk about our professional medical lives, billing insurance versus cash pay, the freedom to say no, the freedom to say yes, and dealing with the emotional lives of patients.  He is a thoughtful man, an attentive and involved father, and a devoted husband.  The love of his life is about to die, any moment, every day for about two weeks, or the last two years, depending on how you measure it.  We are in a holding pattern, he says to those who call and interrupt.  Today he has a break from his children, but not the inlaws or the nieces and nephews, not the legalese meets hospice, and not the lunatic who has taken his wife's place in their home. 

My mother went through this, when her partner died about a year and a half ago.   Also cancer, totally different kind, but eventually reached the brain and danced the dance with the pain meds and reality broke loose and the lunatic moved in.  The person who lost all inhibitions, and barked out in anger, fear and pain.  The person who said nasty, horrible, very mean things and forgot the years of love and tenderness.  The person who becomes the embodiment of the cancer that has won, yet the battle isn't over.  It still took him over a month to die, after that, while she shivered in pain, horror, fear and loneliness.  The man I loved died long ago, she cried to me, but I promised I would be here.  Unfortunately, he forgot that long before the end.

My friend looked good, better than he had sounded almost two weeks ago.  The shock of imminent death replaced the unspoken reality that death has been their constant companion for over a year.  He has been father and husband, therapist and caregiver, making everyone else feel better.  I was happy to be a diversion, the surprise in the grind towards her death.  A day spent with planning the memorial, and jostling space for a hospital bed in the front room.  I was thirteen when we met, he was fifteen, I had a wild crush, he encouraged it.  Floating in the pool with his sister, the three of us talking teenage angst and watching the desert stars move across the saguaro sky.  Now, almost thirty years later, he looks the same but older, as hair has thinned and turned grey white, the fine lines etched in, his face exactly the same but engraved with 16 years of marriage to a high strung woman who has not been kind for a very long time.  He loves her, and he is exhausted.

I wasn't prepared for this, that her mind would go.  I didn't know it would happen, it is so hard.  We both agree her mind started to check out a while ago, and not everything was just related to the disease.  We share a secret past, a childhood ensconced in the country club lawns of Long Island, tennis played on grass and clay, pheasants at dusk, sailboats and marshes.  We speak of the imbalance of relationships, that which is in you no matter how far you go away, and that which may be unequal in marriage, in friendship, in a land 2000 miles away.  He has lived here long enough his home exists where only rattlers and roadrunners dwelled when we were kids.  We could be sitting on the deck of the club, in docksiders and madras and a summer dress, drinking a Harvey Wallbanger and listening to Lester Lanin spin out the tunes with his band, and still be having the same conversation, now or thirty years ago.  A world his kids will never know, a world my family leaves behind in photo albums and swimming medals.  

We make plans for when it is done.  Plans to resume life, when it has all settled down.  Plans to leave the house, plans to dine with others, plans to laugh and drink, plans to dance, plans to shake it all to the wind.  Plans for our kids to mingle and have dinners with our families, his sister, my sweetie, his parents.  His sons, my step daughter, they liked each other that time two years ago .... All this time, I think, wow, he has it made.  Beautiful wife, beautiful family, happy marriage, good life.  And we still end up having coffee wondering what the hell happened, damn I have known you forever, and shit, this really sucks.  She is surrounded at home by her family, oblivious to the endless plans and phonecalls he tends on her behalf, while her parents and sister take over and drown out everyone else.  He can't retreat any further. 

I'm glad we could get together, I really needed to get out of the house.  Of course.  We talk about parenting.  I tell him I think his youngest is going to be a stoner if we don't watch out.  He laughs and thinks about it, probably true, and we giggle thinking of how our parents tried to scare us straight way back in high school.  Kids these days, they are just a bit scarier, and just a bit cooler, depending on which ones you get.  I get to borrow two, one of each, and he has two, too soon to tell.  They will be momless soon.  I am sad, and happy, and feel the surge up in life again.  It is spring, after all, and maybe a full moon out.  

I'll be back at the office thursday, if you need another coffee break.  Laugh.  Yeah.  Thanks.  

Like the lunatic, the tide pulls in and out.  The neap tide has passed, and the spring tide is in.  The maximum of highs and lows, the difference is pulling and pulling with no relief yet.  I hope he gets to flow again, he looks ebbed out.  Time, really, contains a whole life and yet nothing, nothing has changed at all.