Still Counting

My friend Pat died last night. She was 76 years old. She died young in a country where female life expectancy is 82, a country with excellent health care. Lung cancer took her life. Life is unfair; some get so much more. Ironically her husband, a man of 86 years, is strong and healthy, except that he has dementia, possibly Alzheimer's. Thanks to his illness, he can't remember from day to day this the woman he was with for more than 50 years is no longer here. Yet he is strong enough to get up, get about, and enjoy each day.

When I moved into this building, I didn't know I had ALS. I was diagnosed a couple of months afterwards. I didn't say much to me neighbours at first. I had enough to deal with telling my co-workers, friends, and family. It was a frightful, tearful time. It was when I brought my son to live with me for that first year that Pat asked what was going on. I told her. It was another tearful moment. Right there and then she took me under her wing, a mother hen defending her injured chick, notwithstanding that I was a grown man, or that she had three of her own.

Pat was a fearsome woman, a force of nature. She was the chairperson of our condo board, filled with activity, using her energy to defend and protect our homes from what she felt would be poor decisions by others, never mind that some of them were not. She had an idea of how things should be run, and by God we were going to run them that way.

There was, however, a frustrated side for Pat. At times, many times, she needed a sounding board, someone who could listen without judging, respond without criticising, and most importantly of all, sit and share a bottle of wine with her while she talked, or sometimes listened. She was a natural ally, even when we had the occasional fierce disagreement. Battles with her were loud, fast, and then forgotten.

The ultimate irony came on two fronts. When her husband, Paul, started to show signs of dementia a couple of years ago, it was extremely difficult for her to care for him, particularly as his condition worsened. At the same time I was needing more neighbourly help, something she was constant in providing. Then she got sick; lung cancer. She declined quickly.

We've known for some time that her cancer was terminal. That's where the irony arises. This strong, powerful woman, this mother hen, this woman who cared for me was supposed to live, while I was supposed to die. Yet here I am, almost six years past diagnosis, three years past my due date, still alive, still plugging along. She has left this earth. Her husband, no longer able to live alone, has gone to a care home where I suspect he will begin a rapid decline, not because of the home but because he will have lost his way in life. Yet here I remain, still counting my days.