Out of nowhere, he says, “Leila is all gone.”

I am completely taken aback.

“Yes, Jonah,” I say, “Leila is all gone.”

A moment passes.

“She was in the hospital.”

Over the last few weeks, Jonah has visited David, and the kids, Jacob and Joseph, with us several times at their house. The last time Jonah saw Leila was about a month ago and eight days before she died, in the hospital. The day that I didn’t write about when I was chronicling these events here. The day we’d all been told she had hours to live, and we’d rushed to be by her side. Jonah has only referred to that day one other time since then, talking about the beaded lizard he’d liked, that was attached to Joseph’s backpack that was on the floor, leaning against the hospital bed.

“That’s right. The last time we saw her, she was in the hospital.”

He thinks a bit.

“Where did she go?”

I think for a bit.

“Leila died. She went to heaven. We won’t see her again… Do you miss her?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Yeah, we’re exciting.

But, surprise, Jonah has changed Halloween for us.

We carved a pumpkin. Jack-O-Lantern! We put a battery operated candle in it and his favorite activity became opening the top, pulling out the candle, turning it off and on, off and on, putting it back in, replacing top, repeat. All the while with the live action narration of his activities.

As video in previous post shows, the bumblebee costume was a big hit. He wore it again on Halloween day, and night, and again for most of this morning. Yesterday, at the neighborhood parade and carnival, we ran into two other bees and attempts at photographing the swarm were made:

Yes, we discussed mugging the “beekeeper” parents for their costumes.

Scott and I were witch and goblin — I taking advantage of my many all-black wardrobe options and an old witch hat we had in the basement, and Scott wearing all-black also plus a giant hooded cape his mom had made for him in the 8th grade that still fits.

Jonah enjoyed the whole “treats” thing, taking a shiny brightly colored wrappered candy from the cauldron at each participating merchant’s door along the tot-parade route. Note the witch bag in above photos provided by the local Chamber of Commerce type rep who led the parade. Jonah has never eaten candy (that I know of) but he is besotted with the idea of “treats” since we are already familiar with kitty treats and doggy treats. He puts the treats in his bag, takes them out, offers them to me, leaves them around, steps on them.

Not that we escaped the sugar rush. There was a cupcake decorating table at the fair, and you know how he is about cupcakes. Note crumbs on his cheek in above photos as well as this pre-consumption lip-smack:

After the fair, we took Jonah home for the obligatory attempt at napping. (Ha ha. ROTFLMAO.) The afternoon was a mostly quiet affair, with the boy refusing to re-don the costume, and us being fine with not going to see Asheba or Cowboy Jared, though we would have been game if the boy had been up for it.

He did get excited when the trick-or-treaters started showing up at our door around 7. Since I’d decided that he would have a later bedtime (8pm) last night, to try to adjust to daylight savings, we, in agreement with he who was tired but still interested in an adventure, got our costumes back on and went out into the night to view neighbors’ holiday installations.

Jonah’s opinion is generally that Bai-DURRRS are really great. GULLS (skulls) are pretty cool too, and mostly not scary. Jack-o-lanterns are FRIEND-Leeee; he especially likes when, “IT HAZ UH SDEMMM!” And SKEYL-a-tonz, he likes also. But the yard with the hands and feet and head coming up out of the ground he definitely did not like, and SkayerCROWS, even the smiling ones, are uniformly, without question, SKAYUREEE.

So, other than the scarecrow problem, and it’s surprising how many tableaux include the scarecrow, Halloween is basically the kid’s favorite holiday.

So far anyway. We’ll see if he develops a similar love of turkeys…

In lieu of deep thoughts or cute Jonah stories, I present cute Jonah in his entirety, in bumblebee costume, on video (never mind my messy messy house):

Grandma Marcia in town. She and Scott and Jonah play with the boy all day, who naps mid-wise in the stroller while I am out and about on my own.

Tour preschool in the morning. Beautiful school, lovely people, pleasant interaction all around.

Get pedicure. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Try new Mexican restaurant. Eat best chile rilleno stuffed with lamb and cheese of entire life.

Find new chocolate restaurant. Sample chocolates and have lovely chat with proprietor about Mexican restaurant, lamb recipes, ayeurvedic healing.

Get bodywork from lovely cranial-sacral guy. Talk about life, cry a bit in a healing way, stand up afterward and feel grounded and uplifted at same time.

Bad Day:

Return to car to find ticket and threat to impound notice because, discovery, license plate tags have been stolen, the pile lifted off down to 2004. Tags older than 6 months mean you can be towed. Right. Like I haven’t registered my car in FIVE YEARS. Thanks, officer.

Good Day:

Drive straight to AAA office near home, no line at DMV window. Get the new guy, a trainee. Decide I can be joyful with this experience. Exude total patience and sense of humor. Guy suggests I am so funny I should be on “Chelsea Lately.” I adore this compliment.

In parking lot, some guy tells me I am beautiful and he’d like to marry me.

Driving home, I spot husband, MIL and the boy at the park. Decide to keep driving home because I need to lie down and rest post-bodywork.

Bad Day:

Get home, driveway I normally turn around in to park is blocked. Go a little further up street to turn around, back into fancy BMW convertible in the process, waking napping guy in front seat. Exchange info with napping guy who estimates that tiny scratches will yield $2,000 in damage. I think he’s joking. He’s not.

Why, universe? WHY WHY WHY?????????

Good Day:

Try to remain sanguine in spite of this “glitch” in day. If anything, perspective returns. I’ve backed into five cars in my lifetime in just this way. I’ve been backed into in this way twice.

Return to lair to devise un-dent-able car, mass produced out of natural rubber and other eco-friendly materials. Distribute worldwide. Make millions.

You know?

What have I been up to?

A) Grieving, yes. Processing loss. Seems like I, and everyone else close to her, are feeling guilty for SOMETHING regarding our friend who recently passed. I’m starting to get over it, which is good.

Here are my takeaways from the conversations I’ve been having in my head, and with others:

1. People are complicated.

2. Life is busy.

3. It’s not a bad idea to try to be more loving and spend more time with people you care about “in real life,” rather than online or on the phone, but this goal can be complicated by #s 1 and 2.

4. If the internet is sucking up the time you should be spending working towards your goals and dreams, turn the computer off more often.

5. If the internet is giving you an opportunity to express yourself and connect with others in a way that feels satisfying, this may complicate #4.

B) OMG, Preschools!!!!!!

I have been increasingly obsessively researching preschools. What can we afford? What do we need? What is right for Jonah? Which fricking fracking feshlugeneh schools exclude him for an extra year because he is not going to be 3 on September 1, 2010. Play-based, Montessori, Co-op??? Mixed ages; classes divided by age.

And I thought decisions around breastfeeding, diapering, and sleep training were fraught.

Today we ate cookies for breakfast. One big cookie. A breakfast-bar type thing made with tons of whole grains, and butter and sugar. It seemed more breakfast-y before I’d read the ingredients list which was after he’d already had half of it. Oh well.

Official definition of solipsism isn’t exactly what I meant. Self-centered-ness. Navel gazing. A-ha! Yes.

Hello navel.

Jonah loves to find my belly button and poke it with one finger. He thinks that’s HILARIOUS. And when he can slap my belly and get the whole thing rolling? Awesome.

We’ve been having popsicles for breakfast. Even though they are homemade, organic, and practically all fruit (recipe: about 1 bag of frozen mango chunks, one container of fresh raspberries, spoonful of honey, dash of lemonade, a little water, all cooked together, blenderized, frozen) I still feel guilty.

He loves talking about popsicles, and ice cream, and cupcakes. We play pretend where he takes my order, or I his, he usually asks for strawberry ice cream, and we hand it to the other, pretend to eat. The bill almost always comes to “eigh-TEEN doll-arrrrs.”

Must work on more of those muffins with zucchini and cheese in them, that sort of thing. Maybe get an ice cream maker to do homemade frozen yogurt with low sugar…

In other news regarding feeding:

<Gets up on rooftop, flips switch on megaphone, waits for end of feedback wail, places in front of mouth>

WE HAVE RETIRED THE MEDELA BOTTLES!

People, seriously? How I have come to loathe those tiny five ounce cloudy plastic impossible to clean silicone nipple leaky cracking fill four before I leave the house anytime I leave the house because he MUST HAVE ONE RIGHT NOW at any given time can’t ride in a car without one can’t fall asleep without one can’t stay asleep if he fell asleep with it must have one when he wakes up in the morning walks around chewing on the empty with it hanging out of his mouth like a dang cigarette for an hour at a time holy heck no wonder he was drinking 40 ounces of milk a day…

Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad; but it was close.

Last week, without even really deciding to do it, I gave him a Born Free sippy with a nipple insert replacing spout insert.

“This is your BIG BOY bottle,” I told him.

He complained off and on for about two days. “Want the SILVER bottle” he said, pointing to a Medela still in the drying rack on the counter.

No no. Big boy bottle only.

And that was it. He no longer demands a bottle the minute he wakes up in the morning. He’ll take a sippy, with the spout even, for car rides or stroller rides, or no bottle/cup at all. If anything, now I have to figure out HOW TO GET HIM TO DRINK ENOUGH MILK. Seriously? Wow. That’s my problem now? Cool. I’ll take it.

I meant to ask David if there was a significance to the director’s chair in the pathway to the front door. I don’t remember if it was there when I arrived in the afternoon yesterday. I do remember stepping around it on the way to my car at 11:30 last night. It seemed a little like the cup for Elijah. But who were we waiting for? Leila to come back and sit on it?

I last saw her last week, on Thursday. The day the miracle workers came. The day of anointments. On Friday she was supposed to go home, to begin hospice. I got a message from someone that she would be staying in the hospital through Monday. That she wanted some time to absorb what had happened during the healings. Especially that last one with the monk, where he’d wrapped her in the mantle of a modern saint, crossed her forehead, eyes, cheeks, throat, and heart with sacred oils, prayed over her for 35 minutes in four languages.

I heard she wanted things to be all set up and ready for her. That she needed to rest and didn’t want visitors. I called her home and left a message to let her know I was aware of the schedule and thinking of her. So I was surprised when the phone rang Saturday morning and it was her.

I was almost out the door, with the grandparents, and Scott and Jonah, all of us bundled up and ready to head out to Tilden Park to ride the Steam Train. Leila was talking slowly, as she has done now for weeks, what with all the narcotics and the exhaustion of illness. She informed me she’d come home because the insurance wouldn’t cover her hospital stay anymore. They don’t have a line item for rest and contemplation.

I told her I was glad she was home and that I had to go. That I would talk to her later. How many times I’ve said that in these last six weeks of rollercoastering in and out of hospitals, towards and away from the brink of death? Why did I need to be so many other places? There simply is never enough time, never enough “laters.”

Sunday morning I called and left another message. I wanted to get her blog passwords, so I could use a service that turns blogs into books, for the kids. A few minutes later, she called. But not necessarily because I had called. One of those crossed wires moments. She fumbled who she was calling at first. “Johnny?” — “Julie,” I reminded her.

The hospital bed wasn’t working right and they couldn’t get it fixed because they had to go off hospice in order for her to be able to get one more procedure. A catheter that would drain the fluid from her tumors, paracentesis. A procedure she’d been traveling to San Francisco to receive once a week, to relieve the pressure. She was angry, frustrated.

She’d felt so sick in the night, she was shaking, she told me. Her husband wouldn’t let her call 911. “I was ready to let go,” she said. Whatever I said back was clearly insufficient because next she shouted at me, “THAT’S A REALLY BIG DEAL!”

She and her husband were sleeping on the sofa bed in the meantime. The old sofa bed that she’d slipcovered, but they’d had to take the slipcover off to open it out. She wanted to know if I might help her get a new sofa bed. Would IKEA deliver?

At this point David got on the phone and asked me to please not go buy them a sofa. He’s familiar by now with my tendency to take Leila’s requests and run with them. The toilet paper, the moisturizer, the pajama pants. But I assured him I wasn’t going to buy them a sofa. He explained that 911 wasn’t an option anymore. “Unless she breaks a limb, I have all the medications she needs here.”

I knew other friends were going to visit her that day, so off I went again into the swirl of grandparent and toddler time. On Monday when I called, she was too tired to talk. Or was that Tuesday? Yes. I’d waited till the grandparents left. A flurry of emails that day confirmed that Leila’s MFA professor and friend had offered to edit and publish her novel and Leila accepted.

On Wednesday, I went over to the house. A woman with long red hair and hazel eyes answered the door, a friend of Leila’s from almost 30 years ago, college and her New York period. Eva had flown up from L.A. for the day. Leila was asleep. Eva was cleaning out the refrigerator. Together we made a big pot of spaghetti sauce for David while he napped (Leila keeps him up at night like a newborn.) We stood in the kitchen and looked out at Leila, her sleeping face framed in the pass-through window. Eva told me: When I first met Leila, I was so in love with her. She was just so beautiful, and so fabulous. I told her I thought we would be friends forever, that we would grow old together. She looked at me in that way, (Eva mimics, creating a distance with a wave of one hand, upper torso pulling backwards) ‘Don’t be so presumptuous,’ she told me. But now, it’s almost come true.

When it was time for her to go back to the airport, Eva stood next to the hospital bed and talked to still-sleeping Leila, said goodbye, cried. I couldn’t hear her over the exhaust fan from the stove, but I could tell by the shape of her back what the conversation was.

I could not, have not, did not talk to Leila while she seemed out of it. I watched others do it. But I just couldn’t. For the most part.

That afternoon, I held her hand. Her skin was so dry, so I put lotion on. Each time the cold dab from the bottle touched her skin, she startled, eyes wide. I reassured her. Telling her exactly what I was doing, the same way I used to narrate diaper changes and such to Jonah when he was a newborn.

She never actually acknowledged me that day. I’m not sure she recognized me. I could tell she knew who David was, and when her mother came, I heard her say, Mom. Several times she tried to get out of bed and I tried to explain to her that she couldn’t. But it seemed impossible to explain. Her mind didn’t know the limitations of her body anymore. Eventually she’d give in and lie back down.

I talked a lot to David that day. True things we’ve been thinking and feeling. (Later, when others, a friend, one of the nurses, claimed that she could hear everything, even when we thought she wasn’t with us, wasn’t comprehending, I was grateful for the conversations I’d had with others in her presence, because we’d said things to each other I’d never gotten a chance to say to her.)

The next day, yesterday, her condition had declined even more. I got the news in an email that afternoon, that she was more out of it, that her lungs were full of fluid. I’d just been in the process of trying to organize a sign-up sheet, for those of us who wanted to visit, to keep David company with Leila. I said I’d come at 5:30. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what to do next, what to do until 5:30. I ended up grabbing some food from the fridge, to cook dinner for David and I, and walking out the door right then. I called the nanny. “Please prepare Jonah, let him know I won’t be here when he gets home.”

I was unprepared for the sound of someone breathing through fluid. Rough, jagged, bubbling breaths. Her head would move, her mouth open wide, gulping at the air. Her eyes were slightly open, unfocused. Is she awake or asleep? I asked.

I sat down on the couch, and for the first time in her and David’s presence, I cried.

The plan for the evening was this: one friend, who’d been there all afternoon, would go home and feed her dog. David was going to go pick up the kids and take them out to dinner as soon as the nurse arrived at 5:30. The meal I’d brought to cook for David would now be for the friend, who would come back around 6:30, and another friend would be on her way over at 7.

These events occur: I put ointment on Leila’s hands. A special salve made from shea butter and tea tree oil, prepared by a neighbor. The friend leaves. I sit down next to Leila and meditate. We used to meditate together. Etie arrives right on schedule, David leaves.

Etie administers Leila’s medications over the next hour, by droppers: morphine, haldol, something to ease the rasping in her throat. I ask her if she thinks Leila is still with us. She says no. The body has shut down. Her eyes aren’t focusing. The only organ working now is her heart.

I tell Leila, “Honey, I’m going to make pork chops in your kitchen. I hope that’s okay.”

Etie sits with me in the kitchen while I cut up apples for applesauce. Four apples from my garden. I slice each one into small pieces, making a pile of cores and peel. Etie asks me questions about Leila while I chop. I realize I am cutting very slowly. “I think this is therapeutic,” I say. “Leila was a really great cook,” I inform her, experimenting with the past tense while rooting through the spice cabinet, looking for cardamom, ginger. “This meal is an homage.”

Etie asks if Leila has kids, if I have kids, tells me she has six, all grown, still back in New Zealand. “I got divorced and I needed to live in a different country from my husband,” she says in a thick accent. She asks where Leila’s kids are. I tell her. “In my culture,” she says, “the kids would be with her. Everyone would be gathered around her.”

Etie goes out to the living room and sits with Leila while I eat my meal. Blackened pork chops with applesauce, fried potatoes, and salad dressed in lemon juice and cumin. Etie studies the posterboards of family photos we’d displayed at the Healing Circle event, less than two weeks ago, now placed against the wall at the head of the hospital bed. “She was very beautiful,” she says, “and so young.”

K. arrives and joins me at the kitchen table. She says Leila’s breath sounds different. Worse. I can’t hear it exactly. As much as possible I’ve tuned it out, mentally turned it into the sound of a machine, rhythmic.

We talk about whether or not Meg is going to come over. It’s just 7. Did she get K.’s email? Did she know David wasn’t going to be here but we were?

Meg arrives. She immediately starts crying, assuming that my presence in the house means Leila is already gone.

She comes in and we all hug, and then we start to putter. Do you think we should open these cards, put them out around the room? Perhaps not. The kids may come after she passes, maybe they wouldn’t want to see all the cards around. Meg, the organizer, goes through the mail, sorting out bills from the rest of the pile. K. and I explain to Meg that David is out with the kids.

We hear a noise. What was that noise? Again.

Leila, vocalizing. A sound. A long moaning sound.

Is she in pain? No, she’d just had morphine a little bit ago. The three of us gather near her head, Etie stands near Leila’s feet, but at a distance. This is it, she tells us. Leila’s eyes focus, staring into K.’s. I place my hands gently on Leila’s head, as I have done so many times in the last few weeks, and the last two days. I lean close to her. Meg is standing behind K. The bubbling in Leila’s breathing is gone. Her breaths are slower, farther apart. The three of us are all talking, crying, praying. Leila, you are so beautiful. We love you. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is okay. You did good. You did so many good things in this world. We love you. It’s okay.

“She’s gone,” says Etie.

I try closing her eyes, like they do in the movies, but the lids pop right back up. Etie explains that it takes a while. We position her head and I hold her jaw and eyelids closed while Joni and Meg start cleaning up. K. calls David. Meg gathers all the medical gear and supplies and moves them into the garage, to make the room more hospitable, if the kids decide they want to see her.

Etie leaves. “Tell David, he doesn’t have to pay me for tonight,” she says.

After a while, I trade places with K., finishing up the dishes while she holds Leila’s face. I clean out the freezer. Meals will be arriving soon. I put out dried apricots, pretzels, pine nuts, remembering that my grandmother, right before her death, had made a list of items that she’d wanted for her funeral, such as white roses and sand from Israel to be placed on the casket, and no one could figure out why she’d written “pistachios” until finally we realized she’d meant, for the guests.

Arrivals: Her mother, David, the kids.

I call a few people to give them the news. My friend tells me of washing her father’s body after he had passed. A Jewish ritual.

The hospice nurse arrives. She says, “In this situation, I usually offer to wash and dress the body, if you would like me to do that.”

Yes!

I choose a long turquoise middle eastern caftan with gold embroidery, the one I think she may have worn to the Healing Circle, though none of us can recall for certain. I show it to David and his eyes light up. Yes.

K., the nurse — whose physical beauty, like the startling handsomeness of every doctor and nurse at the hospital, Leila would definitely have remarked upon and appreciated — and I respectfully wash and dress Leila, put a necklace on her, cross her hands and rest them on her belly, lay a blue and white flowered coverlet over her feet.

It’s such a simple thing, and why bother, except that is possibly the one thing I am the most grateful for. That we gave Leila’s body this small dignity. Her face, the struggle removed, looked so peaceful and young. She was almost smiling.

* * *

At-one-ment, part three

At-one-ment, part one

When he sings, the words are drawn out extra long. The tune is discernible. if you know what he’s going for.

His version, which he sang to himself while playing with his toys in the morning:

Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Buh-ket Loa-Dur

Dri-VING up tha Roooaad.

Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Buh-ket Loa-Dur

ScooPING up tha DuuurT

Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Buh-ket Loa-Dur

Heeere it comesss

Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Buh-ket Loa-Dur

Vrrrrrrr

Driving uptha ROAD

Hmmmmmm

Here it comesssss.

Buh-ket Loa-Dur, Du-ump TrucKS, Cheeerrry Pick-URrrs, Bucket Loaderrrrs, Du-ump Trucksss.

* * *

Other things he’s said lately:

While I was buckling him into his car seat, “You Can DRIVE the STEERING wheel in FIFTEEN years.” (The I/you gets reversed with him because he is mimicking whole phrases. Guess who often tells him this when he begs to drive? Only now we’re down to 14.)

In a Vietnamese restaurant the other night, as he was asking us about the various condiments on the table:

“The HOT sauce is SPICY. If you put it on your TONGUE, it BURNS.”

In the natural history museum today:

“That’s a fine lookin’ weasel.” (Though in a previous post I tried to blame the nanny for this newly-added turn of phrase to his lexicon, I realize he did in fact pick it up from me. I’ve also taught him “That sucks,” which seems appropriate for an almost 2-year-old, and my friend Naomi recently got him into “What the heck?”)

At lunch, in the museum cafe:

“Agua?” he said, asking for water in Spanish. I am pretty sure he learned that from his bilingual buddy Laszlo yesterday.

He also has this comedy routine, based on all the different things I say to him when we are horsing around.

<begin joke>

“You are a wiggle worm,” he says, meaning himself.

I laugh and repeat, “You are a wiggle worm.”

“AND you are ADORABLE!” he says, which I repeat.

“And you are A NUT!” he says, and I repeat, laughing.

“And you are A DOOT!”

“Yes,” I repeat, “you are astute!”

</end joke>

* * *

A Buddhist Episcopalian priest, a spiritual social worker, and a Greek Orthodox Monk walk into a cancer ward…

I may write about yesterday tomorrow. Don’t you want to know how the joke ends?

This morning, I woke up and noticed the message light blinking on our phone. My friend had called at 5 a.m.

As of 4 p.m. yesterday, I was convinced I was never going to see her, or speak to her again. So this was unexpected.

She needed me to find this woman A.K.’s phone number. I started with Facebook, saw that we had mutual friends, made some calls, left some messages.

I call my friend’s husband. If you can come today, he says, you should. I cancel work and head over. As the day unfolds, these things happen:

I’m in the car, driving to the hospital. I suddenly have this elastic sense of time expanding. There’s no need to hurry. The first song to come on the radio is R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts. I cry.

I get ahold of another mutual friend on the cell phone and learn that the 5 a.m. call is because A.K. is a member of a local Greek Orthodox church that is associated in some way with performing miracles. My friend wants to take her family to the shrine there. Today.

I arrive at the hospital just as the Buddhist Episcopalian pastor does — the man who led the healing circle on Saturday. He’s come with Greek Orthodox icons in hand, because he knows about my friend’s desired errand, plus a jar of healing oil used for anointing. My friend, her husband, her mother, the two boys, me, we invoke the holy spirit and receive blessings on our heads. My friend tells a story of visiting the shrine to Tecla, in a cave in Syria, last fall, where nuns anointed her belly with oil.

Afterward, we talk about whether or not God cares if you are fearful.

I insist that it’s human to be afraid of what you can’t know or understand. We’re just knocking around in these stinky, messy bodies. The pastor leaves the icons for my friend, on loan. We set up an altar on the cabinet top with an apple, and the tissue-flowers and get well cards the kids made with a social worker yesterday.

The day goes by. I’m glad to be able to just sit with my friend. Her husband takes the boys to the park, her mother goes out for lunch. I put my hands on my friend’s shoulder, her arm, her head, offering Reiki healing (I was once certified first degree, many years ago). My friend naps and I sit beside her, meditating.

Midday a doctor comes to break the bad news. They won’t let my friend off-campus to visit that church. Her mother tells me later that there was no way in heck she was going to drive her over there anyway.

A.K. and I finally reach each other. The priest/monk — he’s both, or something — at her church is willing to come to the hospital. He will bring his “vestments.” She would like to be there for it. She asks me to call her if he arrives before she does.

Meanwhile, another friend has arrived. One who is a professional estate organizer, and thus one who knows a lot about the ins and outs of end-of-life care.

A new doctor arrives, one I haven’t met yet in my weeks of hospital visits. He asks my friend, “Do you have any questions about your condition?”

She doesn’t, but I do. I ask him to speak with me in the hallway. The organizer comes out too.

WTF? I basically ask. Yesterday, she was given hours to live, and today, here we are.

He explains that with infections, you know where you stand. But organs are unpredictable. They can fail, they can recover. Yesterday, yes, she had “hours to days” and now they’re back to “days to weeks.” She’s been upgraded. But there still isn’t anything they can do for her, other than pain meds.

The organizer asks him if her care protocol would be any different if she were in hospice. The organizer says that once this thing is invoked, our friend will get medicare coverage and more services than she knows, more than she can get now.

He says she has to talk to her other doctor. And maybe he mentioned a social worker would come after?

Moments later, a social worker walks into the room. He’s there because he’s supposed to give her her “directive” to fill out. But that’s a mistake, because she’s already filled one out. It just needs to be notarized.

He’s an awkward, almost abrasive man, at first. The confusion… something.

The organizer, the mother, the patient, and I are all looking at him. The organizer asks him about hospice. I’m thinking that we aren’t supposed to discuss it with him, but I’m not sure. The mother looks away. She looks tired, uncomfortable.

But then the social worker starts talking. Really talking. About the benefits of hospice. About how sometimes people go on hospice and then heal. How there’s what doctors do and then there’s the fourth dimension. He asks my friend if she’s cried. It’s healing to cry. We don’t know, he says, if this is the end, or just the biggest spiritual trial you will ever face. Miracles happen. I’m a hypocrite, he interrupts himself at times to note. That he can talk about miracles but still worry about debt, the day to day. If we really believed we were all fundamentally good, that kind of thing, we’d rise above the mundane.

But that’s my point. Human beings are messy.

He quotes The Course in Miracles, Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, more that I can’t remember. My friend is glowing. We’re all glowing. He holds her hand. He hugs her. He says now is the time to forgive people, to do the work she needs to do to be free. He suggests looking in the mirror and practicing loving herself. He exhorts, “OBNOXIOUSLY love yourself, because that’s how the divine sees you.”

This is a social worker, just some guy, right?

I have to speak from my heart, he says.

Yes. Thank you.

The organizer and I get out colored markers and make a sign with this saying about obnoxiously loving yourself and we post it on the wall.

My friend is now entranced with the idea of hospice, whereas before it had sounded like a death sentence. Her mother tells the social worker how they’d had hospice for the last two weeks of her husband’s life, three years ago. How wonderful it was. So that was why she’d looked away. The frustration of being the mom, of knowing that you can’t give advice because your kids don’t want to hear it from you.

The husband returns, a private meeting with the doctor is called.

I’m in the hallway with the organizer, we’re sharing a gurney, each of us on our laptops, checking email, arranging things. I speak to A.K. — the healing is not confirmed yet but is estimated to be around 4-ish. It’s 3:15. I’m suddenly very very very tired. I feel like I need to get out of there. In a hurry.

You’ve hit the wall, the organizer says.

I say goodbye to everyone. I hug and kiss my friend. Yesterday I’d said “Talk to you later” and it had felt hollow. Today I said it and it seemed true. True-ish.

Out in the fresh air, after five hours on the ward, I immediately start to feel better. And I still want to go home. See my family. My New Mexico in-laws just arrived today. I call A.K. one more time to check on progress with the monk.

She’s beside herself. He’s asked her to pick him up and drive him to the hospital. She’s the pope-mobile.

I wish I could be there and I say so. That’s okay, she says, you got to attend that first healing in the morning. But but but, I’m missing the vestments… sigh.

I will be calling her again for details.

I was supposed to go over to her house Monday night to visit her. I haven’t actually seen her very much in the last two weeks, though we only live a couple of miles apart. I talked to her on the phone a lot. I picked up and delivered an out of town visitor, arranged a calendar of visits from other local friends, co-spearheaded a 100-person healing ceremony and potluck event on Saturday, wherein I was somewhere between bridesmaid and event producer.

So I saw her that day. But I left early. I don’t really like crowds.

Thus, Monday. But Monday was Yom Kippur. Day of Atonement. I dressed up in almost all white, for purity, and my least grungy-looking “walking” shoes. Put Jonah in shorts and a t-shirt, and drove down to the lake, in order to put Jonah in the jogging stroller and take a nice 2-mile walk to temple for the preschoolers service, in what was supposed to be 74-degree weather.

The fog was low. The wind whipped, icily. I put a second t-shirt on Jonah, wrapped a thin flannel around his legs. My shoes, I should burn the shoes. I forged ahead. About a mile into the walk, I called Scott to rescue us. He set out with sweaters and better shoes, I sat on a bench and waited. Construction diversions turned a ten minute trip into twenty.

Jonah didn’t love services. A large room, a circle of chairs, a rainbow parachute and a short woman with short hair and boundless energy barking out directions, kids older than him who knew how to run under the scarf, sit, look for animals with their binoculars. For the standing silent meditation (Amidah) she handed out giant industrial coffee filters and exhorted children and adults to balance them on our heads, making a lovely instant private meditation chamber and giving a point of focus for the “meditation,” and to stand on one foot — more focus? I’m just guessing here. Jonah wanted to go back in the stroller, have another bottle. I set him up suchly, in a corner of the room, so we could still get the last ten minutes. A sing-song prayer of apologies that kids and adults might say. I’m sorry I wasn’t patient. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. Instead of the usual chest thumping that goes with the analogous prayer in the adult service, she had us pat a different body part for each lament. Head, eyes, ears, heart…

We walked home more comfortably, stopping at the store on the way for lunch. (I don’t fast.)

Jonah decided on this day he would not nap. Nothing more exhausting — for me — than that.

So out we went out again, better dressed for the weather, to a park by the bay, next to the train tracks, where we met another mom and toddler set and ran around, climbed, admired the paintings, measured each train by its noise level. “That one was too loud…. That train was NOT noisy.”

When I got home from that, I was too tired to go visit my friend. I called her. She misunderstood what I was saying at first.

“Oh, yes yes, come over!” she practically shouted in an otherwise low-volume conversation, what with the tumors and the constant pain medication.

No, I, mean I can’t tonight, I’m just too tired. I’ll come tomorrow night.

Tuesday I talked to her several times that day, organizing a Reiki practitioner to come to the house, coordinating placing an online order for her for comfy pajama pants.

I called at 7:45 to make sure it was alright to visit. Her husband answered the phone. “I’m taking her to the emergency room. Like right this second.”

to be continued…