The Longest Night

I've been in a blue funk lately ... it's not just the short days. Everything I think and do right now is colored by the fact that a good friend of ours is dying of cancer. Too young -- only 59. He likely won't last the night; surely not the week. It's too late to say goodbye, formally -- we've visited all through the months, but he's slipped into a coma now, completely unresponsive, and even his wonderful wife of 35 years is leaving him alone so he can finish leaving.

So we sat and visited with her this evening, drinking tea and eating the apple cake she made for us, even in the middle of all this ... I can only aspire to that kind of grace. We looked at their wedding pictures, and she talked about her plans for after the funeral; she's going to get an Amtrak pass and travel all over the country to visit friends ... sort of a pilgrimage, sort of a transition into the rest of her life, which I think is really wise. He helped her plan the trip; I can't even imagine.

The whole time we were there tonight, we could hear and see him breathing upstairs -- the baby monitor had red lights that adjusted according to the noise level; two lights, one light.