It has been a long time, too long.  I have been here and there--everywhere from Baltimore to Baker City in the last week, alone.  

 

Tuesday I saw M.,  the woman who is my managerial assistant. She’s back at work from a cancer diagnosis and surgery.  Not good.  M. is in her mid thirties and she is in for a hard time.  Everything is uncertain.  She has a step daughter about 12 or so and a two year old who was born months premature and is only alive because he was born when he was and where he was.  

 

I went to see her right after he was born.  I was led to do it and so I did it.  M. was sitting in bed with her mother and father and a cousin or two in the room.  She looked like hell and she looked tired but there she was. There was so much uncertainty about how it would turn out for the baby.  She looked so worried.  

 

He is fine, now.

 

She has cancer, now.  

 

M. is struggling for her poise. She asked that an e mail go out to everyone to explain that she cannot talk about it.  I spent some time with her, Tuesday.  Office talk, small talk. She’s not doing a Thanksgiving dinner, this year.  She is going over to her sister’s house and has to bring something.  I suggested deviled eggs.  Easy.  Popular.  It felt like the beginning of a long good bye.  But if that is what is, and not just some kind of self centered projection of my cold and jet lag induced depression that I am throwing over her like a death shroud, it’s a good bye up for which I need to show, one I cannot miss.  

 

But I did learn yesterday that a friend of mine, an older woman, has gone through her surgery and has come through clean and clear.  We were very afraid for her.  Her daughter came to town to be with her.  It was very hard on her husband.  They will have a happy Thanksgiving.  

 

I also heard on NPR, while sitting in a huge traffic jam, about a fellow who has cancer and writes about it in a blog.  He got his diagnosis around Thanksgiving, a year or so ago, I think.  He gets to go off chemotherapy for a couple of days, to celebrate.  There is some perspective on the hour and a half extra it took me to get to work.  That kind of thing almost goes without saying, for me, now.

 

It was starting to dawn on me that I will be hearing regularly about such situations but, of course, that’s true.  I am 58 years old.  My friends are of an age.

 

Of an age?

 

Like M.?

 

Like the twelve year old boy who was on my daughter’s volleyball team.  Leukemia.

 

Of an age?  

 

What’s in an age that someone else does not attain for someone who did?