A Year Ago Today

Speaking of losing someone near and dear to you…

A year ago today, my lovely friend Carolyn Kelly lost her battle with cancer. Actually, she lost it many months before 4/9/17 and probably admitted it to herself some weeks before…but it was that Sunday night that someone from the hospice agency called and told me it was all over.

By then, she had no awareness of where she was or what was happening, pretty much sleeping 24/7 as two hospice nurses tag-teamed to monitor her breathing and other vital signs. I stopped in twice a day because I felt I should but we were well past the point when I could do anything or she even knew I was there.

Something one of the hospice nurses said has stayed with me. I sat with her for many long hours as Carolyn slept, already gone effectively gone from this world. The nurse was young and bright and so very, very compassionate. I asked her why of all the positions in her profession, she had chosen hospice…tending to people who were soon to die. She said, "I tried various jobs but I found this one gave me a real sense of taking care of people and helping people."

I said, "Helping them to die?"

"I'm not here just to take care of people like her," she said, nodding towards Carolyn. "I'm also here to take care of people like you."

She spoke of the families and friends who are usually unprepared to take care of someone who is dying, or to deal with the maze of emotions that can accompany the death of a loved one. Carolyn's case, she said, was an easy one because there was just one loved one around — me — and I had it more or less together.

Later, I discussed it with one of my own doctors. He asked me if I was familiar with the five stages of death as defined by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her colleagues. I made him laugh by replying, "Yes, I've seen All That Jazz." They are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. My doctor said, "What a lot of people don't get is that it isn't just the dying person who goes through those five steps. It's usually also the people who love them and care for them."

Not always.  I don't think I went through the first three at all. In fact, I think my value to Carolyn the last year was that I was anchored in the reality of the situation when that became difficult for her. She, I believe, jumped from Denial to something that was more like "Denial + Combat" and eventually to a mix of Depression and Guilt.  The guilt had to do with how much time and money she was costing me and others. She was a caring and sensitive person…the kind who was embarrassed when something she did created a problem for someone else.

Was it one year ago? Really?  At some moments, it feels like one decade and at others, like one week. I have done what I hope all my friends will do when I go. I have mourned briefly, I have taken care of (most of) the business that was left dangling and I have reconfigured my life without her. That last item may sound callous but it has to be done and you can do it without trampling on or losing the memory of the departed one.

Carolyn was a wonderful, smiling, positive presence not only in my life but in the lives of everyone she met. No one was not better for having known her.

In these last twelve months, one of the big "wish she was here to see this" moments was when I received the first, hot-off-the-presses copy of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume Four. I promised her we'd get the book out and keep getting subsequent volumes out until her father's masterpiece of comic art is reprinted in full, all according to Carolyn's plan. Volume Five will be out by Halloween of this year and it's darn near ready to go to the printers now.

That would have made her happy…and everything that made her happy made me happy so I'm now being happy on her behalf. It's not as good as having her around but since a year ago today, it's as close as I can come.