Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash
My friend (let’s call him Marvin) called me a few days ago. Marvin and his wife (let’s call her Sally) are clients and friends in their 70’s who put their spectacular house on the market in 2018, and then again in 2021. The first time it was slow, slow slow and they took it off the market. The second time was fast, fast, fast (50 showings in three days) and they got $300,000 over their asking price. I was thrilled for them.
I was surprised to hear from Marvin, who usually didn’t call unless it was real estate related. Sally was the social coordinator. So I expected they wanted to downsize to a ranch house.
That wasn’t it.
His voice was strange and slow, and then he started to cry when he told me that he didn’t want me to hear it out of the blue, from some newspaper or a stranger, that he had died.
Marvin is probably 82 years old now, and the former CEO of a large company. He told me he has pancreatic cancer, had not been diagnosed for three months of excruciating stomach pain, and had undergone one round of chemo which he feared he would not live through and only exacerbated his agony, without much result. He stopped the treatment and was in hospice care at a nearby facility that his wife and daughter had found for him, ‘which was fabulous’. He was not in pain anymore. He wasn’t eating or drinking, but he was fine with that, he didn’t feel like it. I knew dehydration was a common way to die, and a short respite from pain and renewed energy was sometimes a final gift.
“It’s like a resort!” he said. They take such good care of me; I press that button and there’s somebody here within 30 seconds no matter what I need! It’s incredible! It’s like a resort, really!”
He talked, and cried, about how he never realized how many people cared about him. He always thought nobody would come to his funeral. He said he never realized what an extraordinary life he had been given. He talked about the great gift from God that was his wife and his daughter (from his first wife) bonding so tightly through his six-month ordeal, and that his wife would not be alone when he was gone (they had no children together), which was his biggest fear. He was always the most caring husband I’d ever met.
We both cried, and talked about death, and whether there was an afterlife, which he now believed ‘was possible’, when he always thought there was nothing. I told him I was sure of it.
Probably the meds were making him more open, vulnerable, and emotional because our conversations had never gotten even remotely personal like this—but perhaps it was just the knowledge that he was only going to be on this earth for about two weeks more. What the hell, might as well say whatever you feel. Embarrassment is the privilege of future life.
The gift of talking to a friend who was immediately reconciling with his life, and death can be life-altering. I had had a conversation with my mother about this when we were told she only had a couple of weeks left. I was a death-innocent, never having lost someone so dear to me. I didn’t know what was coming. I thought more about how relieved she would be to be out of pain- not the shock, finality and metabolic change in our family from her disappearance.
I have always thought God could have been more generous with death, make it just a little less excruciating for people, especially the people left behind. But maybe the point of that pain to realize how much you’ve been given in your own life, and really understand and value the important things. It sounds so cliché though, doesn’t it?
I don’t know if Marvin is still with us. That call was over a week ago. Sally didn’t respond to my text.
I will remember him for many things: his stories of the way he managed people, and how their well-being was at the center of his leadership skills, his concern for his wife and her happiness, his love of his daughter and grandsons, the two books he wrote in retirement, the joy he got from his successes, and how he, like many people, struggled to feel relevant as he aged.
But mostly I will remember him for that call, which put me right up against the edge of life for 20 minutes, and changed the way I view MY life forever.
Thank you, Marvin.
a death innocent is exactly right. i'm so glad he did this. a very sad gift. but not all gifts, like surprises, are happy ones.
Beautiful Julie. And then to realize life goes on….and just maybe death is a rebirth