We grow old, we drink of coffee cold (Jan. 4, 1993)

                                                                                               

January 4, 1993

 There's a weariness inherent in my friends these days-- sad sack characters that have come to a certain kind of end in their lives, even when they've barely reached middle age. Every holiday reminds me of them, and I come away with the feeling of dying or death.

 Perhaps I've always felt some ambivalence around them, a sense of purpose lost-- ex-patriate lifestyle even in their own space and time. This year, the feeling has grown, though only added to the sense of mounting age. Jimmy's father died three years ago. Frank's four. My grandmother died two years ago. This year my mother came north. Each brought closer the sense of our own aging.

 This year, it hit home. Charlie died of bone cancer. Frank ran out of choices and now finds himself hooked up to a kidney machine three times a week. Just yesterday, Sharon and I went to the party of her friends and met Pat Rich-- whose prognosis for cancer has gotten more negative, spreading through her system so rapidly no hope remains. Now it’s our turn and it seems to have come early.

 We were always the lucky ones, believing we would never be touched-- and it scares me to think about going to Frank's funeral or Garrick's, or Jimmy's the way I went to Alice's in 1975, or Harold's in 1989. But each holiday brings me to the realization that it can't be avoided, that we grow closer and closer to it and to our own adjustment.

 Pat's eyes said it all yesterday at the party, the dull, flat look of someone who has already been dragged through the thought of dying, who has grown too weary from battling it. She's tired and in time people come to welcome death if they suffer enough, or if they can no longer find energy enough to constantly grind against the machine. And maybe lack of hope plays a role. All of us have played hope against hope and will continue to do so until the end, struggling to keep ourselves from thinking too much about it. But after a time, each hope is stripped away, and we come to understand the inevitable.

 When Frank's father was greeted with this last moment, he folded up and gave up. Jimmy's father refused to give up his cigar, saying he would die anyway, and he wanted to have some pleasure. Frank himself plays hope against hope. He has had warnings about where he would find himself, and didn't believe it, choosing to keep his life the way he wanted, regretting things only after he has lost another hope. He'll die like his father.

 I want to die like Jimmy's father if I have to die at all.