Human

We are heroic, fearful, tragic, outlandish, generous, prideful, beautiful, loud, soft, and always on the verge of losing our breath as we run this treadmill called life.

In a single word: human.

Yesterday, I spent a most of an hour talking with a friend of mine.  I have always (and only) known this person as half of a couple who love being a couple.  My friend spoke more slowly than usual.  His normally bright and flickering eyes remained fixed on me as he told me how something invisible, something mysterious has recently afflicted his wife.  She has become oddly quiet and passive and incredibly slow and forgetful. 

Not a thing you can put a finger on.

Doctors have been sent scrambling.  This one says this.  That one says that.  Yes, something wrong here.  Strange instruments probing.  Testing, testing, testing.  Words thrown against the walls, into the wind.  Nearby machines humming.

Rooms, streets, mountains: everything turning cold at once.

My friend was long-faced and nearly torn in half with worry.  I listened a lot and spoke only a little.  And in the end I said what is always perfunctorily said: “If there is anything I can do…”

But, goddammit, I meant that. 

As I write this, I am nearly out of breath myself.  My glass, this morning, is half empty.  I remember sitting there in the full sunlight of the first day of spring, almost seven years ago, as a doctor plainly said to my late wife: “You have cancer.  It’s terminal.”

Only when you are half of a couple do you fully comprehend the weight of that.

-- Mitchell Hegman