Chapter 2: It Hurts

IT WAS JUST after New Year’s Day of the year our daughter Erin would turn twenty-three. She’d married her college sweetheart, Mark, just after graduation. They were working on starting their family.

“Hey, this isn’t any fun.”

Sophie grimaced and I let her go.

“It hurts.”

“Where, sweetie?”

“Everywhere.”

I grabbed her again and held her, gently.

“When did this start?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

I was pissed, and I guess it showed.

“Sweetie, why didn’t you say anything?”

Sophie started to cry, and I was terrified.

“Wait. Don’t move.”

I got an appointment for Sophie with Dr. Gonzalez the next morning. I figured the gods were on our side since he was usually booked a week ahead, unless you were dying. What a jackass I was.

She must have given them enough blood for two Red Cross blood donations. She peed wherever and whenever they asked her to, and after a gazillion tests they managed to narrow it down to everything it was not. That was a fucking lot of help.

The following week, Gonzalez called us to come back in. As soon as we saw him we knew it was bad news.

Charts, scans, rows of figures. Normal ranges, abnormal ranges. He had enough paper there to run a shredder for hours.

“Sophie, it’s a tumor. I talked to Jameson at Stanford Medical Center. He says he can operate and get pretty much all of it. The problem is, ‘pretty much’ isn’t going to be enough. Not only that, it’s in a tricky place and you stand a better-than-even chance of ending up in a wheelchair afterwards, no matter how much of the thing he manages to cut out.”

He paused. His lips twisted for a second, before he recovered his doctor face.

“I’m sorry. I wish I had better news for you.”

Sophie and I looked at each other. I knew in a second she wouldn’t do the surgery.

“Doctor, without the surgery, how long do I have?”

“Three months at the outside.”

Three months. Three fucking months. Married twenty-nine years, and it comes down to three months?

That night, late, we lay in each other’s arms on the big chaise lounge in our screened patio room, bundled up against the chill.

“Ben, you know we are never promised tomorrow.”

I had no answer.

“It’s been so good, Ben.”

I could feel her tears.

“Erin is going to need you more than ever.”

I held her as I cried. I never wanted to let her go.

Except that she was dying, the next weeks would have been the best of our lives. Sophie wrote to our friends to give them the bad news and tell them how much their friendship had meant to her. Whenever Sophie felt well enough we went out to dinner with friends who traveled to see her.

Sophie started hospice earlier than we’d hoped, but the rotating staff of skilled and warm caregivers made up for that, sort of. Sophie was at home and she was comfortable, even as she began to slip away from us.

The end came at first light on warm Sunday in May. I was dozing in an armchair in our sunny family room where we’d set up Sophie’s bed. I’d started spending nights in the armchair the week before on the advice of the hospice workers. When I told Erin about this she came over to sleep down the hall in her old room.

A gurgle startled me and I was up and beside Sophie in a second. Her eyes were open and she was there. I could see her, Sophie, in her eyes. More and more in recent days she hadn’t been there. This morning, this minute, she was. She couldn’t speak, but her lips twitched in the direction of a smile.

“Erin!”

Erin came in, saw her mother looking at me and trying to smile, and burst into tears. Sophie’s eyes moved to Erin and once more she almost smiled. Sophie’s hand twitched. Erin saw it and leaned down, held Sophie’s hand, and kissed her, softly.

Sophie looked at me then, and I kissed her. I think I felt her kiss me back a little. She held my eyes for the longest moment while I stroked her cheek. Sophie looked at Erin again and smiled her almost-smile. Then she took a breath, and didn’t take the next one.

The hospice nurse arrived in less than an hour, noted the time and made the necessary phone calls.

A few days after the service, Erin and I scattered Sophie’s ashes on the hillside where Sophie and I had spent many happy afternoons in college.