Day 2: 11:05 AM continued

I was on the right path now. I had passed the statue of Ku a mile before and the jungle, which had been so dense you could only see a few yards beyond the trail, was beginning to thin out. I knew before too long I would emerge near the golf course. I was almost out of the woods but there was still a way to go At least now I knew now what lay before me.

It is late February 2020 and I have come to Charlotte to visit Con in his rehab facility. It has only been a few weeks since my last visit but in a little less than two weeks I will be heading to Brazil to spend my birthday with Nadine. I have decided to visit Con now because his tumor, which had been in remission, has reasserted itself. They are exploring other treatment options but the prognosis is clear. He is dying. How fast or slow is uncertain. What is clear is that his tomorrows are limited and I want to spend as much time with my buddy as I can, while I can.

For this trip I have arranged a special surprise Con. Right after Con had been diagnosed, he had asked me to track down his first love, Shoshana Dukes, his high school and college girlfriend. Finding her had not been difficult as she was a part of our high school’s alumni pages. Convincing her to come and visit with Con had been a bit more challenging. While they had communicated on and off over the years, the hurt of their breakup persisted. I had never asked for the details, but Con’s fidelity had been the center of it. In college, Con had treated having sex with as many women as possible as a varsity sport and he wanted to set the NCAA record for most female partners during a college career. No judgement there. If I had Con’s looks and personality maybe I would have tried out for the sport.  But my personality trends towards loyalty. When you promise to be faithful someone you love you don’t try to put more notches in your belt. Especially when that person is your first love and heartbreak of that kind has never been experienced. It is not unforgiveable but the scar it leaves never fully heals.

A week before my trip I IM’d her that I would be visiting with Con. I asked her to join me. To my amazement she answered yes.

The lobby of the Westin hotel looked as if the designer had taken a bribe from Pottery Barn. You had to check twice to see if there were no price tags. Furniture that could be midcentury modern with velvety fabrics, area rugs that looked as if they had been designed by AI mimicking modernist painters with lots of marble with a little gold thrown in for class.  I found an unoccupied seating pod and waited. She arrived right on time. It was not hard to recognize her as the years had treated her with kindness. She was still beautiful and as slender as she had been in high school. Her face was that of the woman, but I could see the girl lurking just beneath the surface. It was awkward. I did not know whether to hug her or shake hand. She resolved it by opening up her arms and we held each other for a beat or two longer each of us understanding the moment and why we were here.

When we sat down, I asked “Would you like a drink? We have a some time to kill before we leave.”

She replied that she would and when the waiter came, she asked him to bring her an extra dry vodka martini. I laughed and said “A woman after my own heart. Make that two and for mine, if you have blue cheese stuffed olives that would be great.” As the waiter went off in search of our drinks I said “You know that was Con Sr.’s drink of choice. “

She laughed and said “Yes, I do. I have been using his recipe for years. Three parts vodkas and wave the bottle of Noily Pratt over the top.” We both laughed, the ice, ironically, broken. When our drinks arrived along with a particularly delicious dish of smokey sweet nuts we engaged in the small talk that old acquaintances make when they have not seen each other in an exceptionally long time. What do you do? How many children do you have? How long have you been married? But when we each had an olive or two and a few slugs of our Martini I asked “Shosh, don’t take this the wrong way but I was very surprised when you agreed to have dinner with Con and the rest of us. I had the impression in all our previous communication that he was an old wound, you didn’t want to rip open again. What changed your mind?”

She paused for a second. No doubt deciding whether she wanted to share with me the surface truth or to dive in a little deeper. Taking a deep draw on her drink and shrugging said “First, I was curious. There was a time in my life when he was at the center. No star shined as brightly. Then when that exploded, I hated him for an extraordinarily long time. Part of my training as a psychologist was exploring all these various emotions that have a nasty habit of holding us back from being the person we want to be. I spent a bunch of time in therapy talking about Con. I came to understand that I had always known who he was and his fucking around should have been no surprise to me. My anger towards him, while justified ,was amplified by my anger at myself for letting it happen.  It is a bit more complicated than that but eventually it got me to get to a place where I could accept him for who he was, forgive both of us for how it all ended, and cherish the wonderful moments we shared. “

She paused to sip her Martini and added “When you initially reached out to me, I did not know whether I wanted to reopen that old can of worms. I was comfortable with the past why fuck that up. But over time, I decided it would be okay.  A way of letting the past be the past, embrace the good times and love we had as opposed to the car wreck that followed.”

Then she laughed and said, “I bet you were not expecting that kind of answer.”

I replied, smiling “I asked.”

“You did! But I left out one thing. He is dying. And he asked to see me. I could not ignore that. I know me well enough to know that if he dies and I hadn’t seen him then it, I would regret it. Call it Episcopalian guilt. ‘”

Laughing I reply, “Can’t be worse than Jewish guilt but I get it.”

She says “Now, let me ask you a question.”

“Okay. Turnabout is fair play.”

“What is he like now? What should I expect?”

It was my turn to take a sip of my drink. I said “He is still Con. He flirts with the nurses and the care staff. The sense of mischief that always made being with him so much fun is still there to a degree.” Laughing I add “The last time I was here he asked me to take him to a tittie bar. “

“Did you go?”

“No, Nadine would not have appreciated it and frankly those places give me the creeps. But I might have taken him anyway as it would have made him happy. He deserves that right now. But I couldn’t get an image out of my head of him with this bewildered look on his face while the girls at the strip club tried to fleece him for every cent that he had. It felt wrong. The good news is that his memory is not what it used to be and the minute I said no he forgot he had asked the question. The bad news keeps asking. “

I take a sip of my Martini and continue “His sense of irony and humor is still there. I was on the phone with him the other day and he suggested we start a web site called “Oh that Donald” which would be dedicated to all the completely ridiculous things Trump says and does.”

I pause for a second and Shoshana sensing my hesitation says “Go on…”

“But…he also very altered. He is Con but the version of him I expected to experience when we were in our eighties. He has a hard time moving around.  He can walk a few steps but he mostly he needs a wheelchair to go any distance and needs assistance just to stand up. “

I started to choke up and take a sip from my cocktail. Shoshana places grabs my hands and says, “Go on.”

“I don’t know how to describe it. It is a look of intense concentration as if he needs to summon all of his mental powers just to remain present. And if it isn’t that look it is one of his confusion or bewilderment like “What is happening to me.” “I add “Am I explaining this well? “

“You are doing fine.”

I take a deep breath and say “He also wears a diaper. It is not a big thing. I mean lots of people wear them. You see ads for them all the time on television. But for some reason it really bothers me.” I pause for a second. Our conversation has gotten way too heavy. I know we need all of our mental strength for what is to come next, so I make a joke of it and say, “But if you come to think of it Con has always had a hard time getting his shit together.” It is not funny and neither of us laugh but it lightens the mood.

We decided to walk to Morton’s. It is not far, about fifteen minutes, and the weather is cooperating with mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the low sixties. When we get Romare Bearden Park, a small oasis of green in Charlottes burgeoning skyline, Shosh stops me and asks “Danny, why do you really think he wants to see me.”

I have thought a lot about this since Con had made this request of me. Not sleepless night thoughts. More benign than that. Workout thoughts. Random moments on planes and trains. That sort of thing. I say “Shosh, when he first asked me, I thought it was because of your dad. He had his legs dangling in the abyss and was scared. He wanted someone to tell him it would be okay, and he knew that I could not do that, and your dad was dead, so you were a good choice. But over time I have come to believe it is far more than that. You know better than anyone how fucked up his home life was. His mother’s alcoholism and her toxic personality disguised under affability screwed every relationship he had with women. But you were a beacon to him in dark times. I think of all the women who were in his life you meant the most. He knows that if he had chosen a different path, gone right when he went left, his life would have been a better version of the one he had. I think he wants to see you because it will give him a glance at the life he could have, should have, had.”

I look at Shoshana. There are tears rolling down her cheeks. I say “I am sorry I didn’t…”

She interrupts me “No Danny. It’s okay. I kind of figured that. I am crying because I understand. Sometimes, I feel the same way.”

Morton’s is located on the bottom floor of one the city’s new office towers on the edge of the business district. Its design is that of expense account chic. An establishment that likely does as much business at lunch as it does at dinner. The proof of that is the décor which is lighter than most steakhouses. The carpet is patterned silver. There is an abundance of mirrors. The well-spaced tables covered with brilliant white ironed and starched tablecloths and crowned with more glass and flatware than the average family of four uses in a week.

I have chosen this place for many reasons. Most importantly among them is that Conor’s favorite meal of all time is a well grilled steak, a green if you insist and a baked potato. Every home, and most of the apartments he had lived in had to be equipped with a grill so he could cook a steak whenever he wanted. The second is whenever I visited Con and his family, I would always take them to one of the best steakhouses in the area and let the boys order whatever they wanted. It was an experience that their parents never afforded them and helped build me up in the eyes of Duke and Liam. Invariably, they would thank me for the meal, and I would always respond the same way: “That is what Uncle Danny’s do.” Finally, having eaten here before, I knew that there was ample space between tables to allow a wheelchair to pass through without too much fuss. This was supposed to be a joy infused meal and I did not want my friend to feel uncomfortable because of his disability or conveyance.

Con’s back was turned to us as we were escorted to our table in by the Matre D’. I signaled Hadley and Liam not to announce our arrival to my friend. As consequence he was somewhat startled when I placed my hand on his shoulder. As he looked up and over his shoulder at me, I said, “Hey buddy boy!” Then stepping aside so he could see Shosh who had been walking behind me said with a wink to her “You recognize this person. She followed me in off the street.” His face flushed confusion, then recognition and broke out with a wide grin. It was then that two miracles took place. The first, the dull confused look that had graced his face since his surgery was replaced by the confident, self-assured, handsome Con I had known most of my life. The second miracle was that after using a wheelchair for the better part of the last six months he stood up, albeit shakily and with the help of the table. He said “Shosh! In utter disbelief.

Shoshana moved quickly from behind me to give Con a hug and to keep him from falling. She helped him back into his chair and then sat next to him, holding both his hands in hers and returning his gaze with a warm understanding smile. Con was stunned by the situation. He just stared at Shosh as if she were one of the hallucinations that were an all-too-common experience for him these days.  Shosh was overwhelmed by the experience as well. It is not easy seeing a person you once imagined spending your life with decrepit, infirm, and altered on the final stages of the trip we all must make someday. However, her experience as a hospital’s clinical social worker kicked in and putting on a mask of joy to cover her shock.

They drifted into their own world. Holding a conversation meant only for two that was interrupted only long enough for them to order their dinner. Liam, Hadley, and I did not interrupt them. It was our gift to Con. For him to have time with the road he did not travel. To feel the wonder of first loved one more time and let it cast a healing spell on him for at least one night. This is not to say that we didn’t steal an occasional glance in their direction. We did. And what we saw was not the sick, slack jawed, terminal patient who had been wheeled in her but an apparition of the old Con, engaged, charismatic and full of the joy of life. At one point, shortly after cocktails had been served, Liam leaned over and whispered, “We did good.” I smiled and nodded. I knew.

When it was time to go, Shosh assumed the responsibility of pushing his wheelchair out of the restaurant. While we waited for the valet to bring Hadley’s Chevy Tahoe around front, the desperately ill Con began to reassert itself. His hands developed tremors, the confused look returned. But as we were helping him into the back seat of the car, the old Con, our Conor reasserted itself one last time and looking at Shosh said “Listen, if you ever decide to leave your husband, you know where I am.”

I was out of the woods now walking along the paved cart path that led back to the main hotel complex. There was a foursome of colorfully dressed golfers who were pushing the design specs of their clothes and packing tour bags t filled with custom made clubs that were worth more than my monthly mortgage payments. Reflexively, I found the scene offensive. It is not that I hated golf. Nothing better in the world than to nap to it on a Sunday afternoon, the soft, awed tones of the announcers soothing you into unconsciousness. I even liked, on occasion, hitting the ball at the driving range. But the idea of spending vast amounts of money on joining a club or paying outrageous green fees or both to spend six hours being frustrated by a sport you could never conquer held no appeal for me.

It is late July of 2020. Mom has been dead for thirteen days. I am struggling with coming to terms with my new life. Life without her. Life without my wife. Life with Covid and the isolation it demanded. My only companion is Fenway who, while she loves to cuddle, has not mastered the art of conversation. Which does not mean that I don’t talk to her. I do. It just means the conversation is one sided although she does look at me as if she has total comprehension.

My days, which before the pandemic were full of engagement, dialogue and motion, were suddenly a still life with the volume on mute. There was no commute. No business trips. No colleagues in which to confer or bullshit. It was just me, myself and I and the occasional Zoom call from friends and former colleagues and the frequent WhatsApp calls to Nadine. There was also the 6pm on the dot call to Conor. Our conversations were not like they used to be full of the detritus of our lives and day. They were for him a reminder that I was there even if I could not be with him in person.  For me it was fulfilling what I considered the basic tenant of our friendship: Showing up. Even when there was little to do but to wave at each other through a screen.

Silence is a strange beast. When the world is too noisy, you crave it like you do a lost love. You invest in noise reduction headphones or beg others to control their volume. You seek out secluded places like woods and parks where you can find the serenity to place your thoughts in order. However, when your world goes silent you begin to crave sound. You leave the television on in the background or play music while you are in the shower, in the hopes that the sound will crowd out the fearsome thoughts that silence allows you to hear. Fearsome thoughts that are only exacerbated in a world where death and dying statistic are on the front page of every newspaper or website and the lead story on the nightly news.

I was lucky. I had a way to quell the silence and fill my days.

My parents had lived in the same split level mid-century colonial home for over fifty years. This is where every holiday was held, every birthday celebrated. It is where we came when the universe was treating us well and a place that gave us peace when it turned against us. Driving up the street to their home always stirred up echoes of long-ago games of touch football, kick the can and late-night basketball games in our neighbor’s driveway court. Entering the house invoked a massive data dump of every family memory from my sister’s first step to Nadine’s and my wedding which was held in its backyard and everything in between.

It was, in its way, a sacred place. We wished that there were some statute that would have allowed us to declare the property a national historic landmark and sheltered us from the crushing property taxes that were due at the beginning of every quarter. But there wasn’t and reluctantly Levi, Lotte and I agreed to put it on the market. Due to the looming tax man, and an unexpectedly good real estate market due to pandemic caused mass exodus from New York we needed to prepare the house for sale quickly. This meant clearing out the house. Decisions had to be made about what was to be kept, sold or given to one of us. It meant cataloguing everything that was in the home.

Levi wanted to have no part of it. Not because he did not want things from my parents’ estate. He was clear on what he wanted and expected as the oldest child.  But he claimed to be far too busy with his work to make the trek out of New York to do any of the heavy lifting. His attitude was expected. After all, he had placed the responsibility of our parents’ care in our hands with the only help provided unwanted advice. This was a mirror of that situation. He had staked his claim to what he wanted and fully expected that Lotte and I would do the heavy lifting.  While his attitude angered me, I did not mind the work. It gave me something to lean up against in the wake of mom’s death, the loss of my job and Nadine’s absence. I had a purpose.

Before the pandemic, each day had an order to it. A schedule. A routine that allowed you to navigate what lay ahead. These days each day melted in each other as if in Salvador Dali painting. Everything was surreal. Even though I was still technically working for a company there was no work. I needed something to do if for no other reason that it kept the sad and dark thoughts of a motherless world gone rogue at bay.

What I had not counted on was how painful and to a far lesser extent cathartic organizing my mother’s estate would be. This was especially true of my parents’ attic. Both Mom and Dad were only children. This meant that every photograph, collection, and various piece of ephemera our family had ever collected was deposited there. There were boxes, steamer trunks, and suitcases full of them. Each one of them needed to be opened, gone through, evaluated, and catalogued. And cried and mourned over. There were the photographs of my father’s aunts, uncles, and cousins that were his families only possessions when they fled Austria in late 1939 all of whom perished in the Holocaust. The scrapbook my mother had created (who knew she scrapbooked) of her courtship with Dad including a picture she took of him the day that they met. Pictures of my mother’s mother and father as tiny children which I had never seen. “Baby books” mom had kept for Levi, Lotte and me. They all reminded me of times that would never be again, questions I had should have asked and the gaping loss of my mother just days before.

I was sitting on the dusty wooden steps of the attic in the middle of a full-blown meltdown, tears romping down my face, when my phone rang. I didn’t want to answer the phone. I was in no condition to speak. But it was Facetime from Conor. Most of the time I called him in the early evening just to check in even though his disease had robbed my friend of most of his ability to hold a conversation. I wanted him to know, he was not forgotten, and he was loved. He almost never called me. If he was calling, he needed to speak and how, all things considered, could I deny him that. I answered the phone.

It was not Conor. It was Liam. I could tell from the background that he was at Horizons in the lounge area directly adjacent to his father’s room. I said “Hey Shrimpy, what’s up?”

He said, with a deeply pained expression on his face “Dad wanted to call you, but I wanted to talk to you first.”

Concerned by his tone and demeanor I said “Sure, what is going on?”

He said, swallowing a sob “The Dr. just left…. And he said…Dad is close to the end. He is not breathing well. He is in pain and in and of consciousness …” Liam broke down into sobs. My heart broke for my nephew. I knew what it felt like to lose a dad, a parent. That was what the pity party I was currently having was all about. I wished I had the words, better yet a magic wand, which would bridge all the hurt that he was feeling. But I had nothing. I said, “Take your time, I am not going anywhere.” For a few moments we said nothing as he tried to rein in the tears and hurt. Eventually he took a deep breath and said “The Dr. suggested that it was time to give Dad permission to leave. Let him know that he is loved, and he will be missed but we will be fine and will see him on the other side.”

“Okay.”

“When you talk to him…”

“You don’t have to say it. I will let him know.”

“Thanks. “

“One more thing. He is very heavily medicated. He sort of drifts in and out of knowing anybody is around.”

“I got it. “

The camera angle shifted. Liam was walking with the phone.  I could see in the background that he was moving down the hallway that led to Con’s room and then entering. The image shifted again and there was my friend of four decades, my ride or die, my bestie, my bro. He had a glazed expression on his face looking as if he was trapped between this world and what comes next. From behind the camera Liam said “Dad, look its Uncle Danny. Say hello to Uncle Danny.”

“Hey budrow, I am over here. Hi.”

Conor turned his head slightly and he took center frame in the image on my phone. He leaned in close to the phone so he could make out on the screen. His movement was sloth like, slow and deliberate and he stared into the screen as if what he was seeing was magic.”

I said “Your son here tells me that you are not feeling well. How are you doing buddy boy?”

He just stared at the camera, confused, and said nothing. He moved closer to the camera and reached out and touched it with a finger. For a moment he was silent and then a look of awareness crossed his brow and he said “Danny.”

I replied “That’s right Con. It’s your brother in arms. How are you doing?”

A small smile erupted on his face, one that elicited every bit of mischief we had ever gotten into together and he said ruefully “You know.”

I laughed and replied “I guess I do. I guess I do. I am sorry you are not feeling well but…”

Conor interrupted me “I love you, Danny.”

I tried not cry and replied “I love you too man. Always. But if you feel as if you need to take a trip. Visit someplace else. That is okay. Nothing will change. I am sure I will catch up with you wherever you decide to go off to.”

Con smiled and leaned back against his pillow and every bit of awareness his face had a few seconds before drained away. His eyes lost focus, and he was no longer present in any real sense of the word.

Liam turned the camera back onto him and whispered “That how he is Danny. In and out. But I think seeing you and what you said will help him.”

“I am not sure I did anything but I’m glad you think it helped him.” Lying I added “It helped me too.”

We paused, neither one of us knowing how to finish the conversation. I said “Listen, you know where I am and how to reach me. Call me if you need me and let me know what is going on. Okay?”

He nodded and said, “I love you Uncle Danny.”

“Love you more, Shrimpy.”

The pity party was back on. I was in the graveyard of times gone by, of long-ago memories, and questions never asked, in the home of a newly departed mother whose scent still filled the house. Now I had a friend to grieve. And, I was alone. My wife was thousands of miles away. My sister locked down in Covid protocols. There was no one to give me the hug that I needed at that moment, which would have solved everything and nothing at all. I could have filled my thoughts with positives affirmations about how good I had it compared to so many other, but I didn’t have the energy. So, I hugged myself and wept.

Conor died the next morning.