Saturday, June 11, 2011

'Bye, Baby...


Lila died this week, on the sixth. I learned it from her Facebook page. I had kept up with her from a distance. I hope she kept up with me, too. I loved her without respite, without reservation.

Three years ago, almost exactly to the day (June 8, 2008), we learned the nature of the illness: "Stage four" adrenocortical carcinoma, which had already metastacized into her throat, her lungs, even her brain stem, and probably her GI tract before they found it. The prognosis was always grim. Life expectancy with stage four ACC is seldom longer than three years. I still don't know how that happened, how that COULD have happened.

She had just spent a week with me, when she went to the docs upon returning to her hometown. That was in March. We were planning another meeting in June, then in August, then... The test results came back in mid-May. We managed to keep it together until September, but we never saw one another again after that trip to Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon in March. The pressure of the uncertainty/certainty of the disease, plus her family, and my helplessness made carrying on further too much to bear.

Ours was an on-again (instantly, and then for 2 years), off-again (8 years), on-again (18 mos) affair. One night, she called me after 8 years. She said "I remember you're not beige." And I remember the night she told me the results of the tests. We were in shock. Her voice had a painfully sharp edge to it as she said, "Well, Johnny baby, it looks like happiness just wasn't in the cards for you and me, for us, I guess." Then sorrow swallowed us.

Guess not.