Today, as always on his birthday, we celebrate the life of our late friend Steve R. Most often I bake a very chocolate cake with chocolate frosting because he loved chocolate. REALLY loved it.
This year’s cake.
I put this framed poem and photo on my desk in 1992 after Steve died. If you can’t read it, it’s by Langston Hughes:
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began–
I loved my friend.
Steve was a musician and conductor, and this photo was taken long before I knew him. He was on a trip to Spain with the University of Minnesota Marching Band, where as a graduate assistant, he helped conduct their performance. The small baton you see in the photo was part of a kit he ordered called “The Armchair Conductor.” Whenever he listened to classical music on Houston’s public radio or on cassettes, he would pick up the baton and, eyes closed, joyfully conduct, both at home and in the hospital.
I usually decorate the cake with small Winnie the Pooh figures because Steve also kept my gifts of a stuffed Pooh Bear and Piglet with him whenever he was hospitalized. (I still have those, too.) His doctor tucked the two of them into Steve’s arms while Geraldine and I held our friend’s hands on either side of him as he took his last breath.
To share in someone’s birth is a time of joy, but it is a profound honor to be with someone as s/he dies.
For me, one of the most distressing truths of the current pandemic is that many patients are dying without their loved ones with them to say, “I love you. Goodbye.” I feel gratitude beyond measure for all the medical workers who are saying goodbyes for those families (by birth and by choice) and friends, who connect them by telephone so they can speak to their loved ones, and who set up virtual visits by phone and tablets.
If you’re healthy, please consider reading about how to prepare for end-of-life care and decisions and what documents you should have in place. People avoid talking about death, but sharing your wishes and thoughts with your loved ones and your medical team is an opportunity for everyone to ensure that when the time comes to say goodbye, your preferences will be known and honored.
I learned many things from and because of Steve. How to say goodbye was one of the hardest, but it didn’t define us. As the years have passed, I’ve become even more aware of what a gift we shared with an honest and compassionate friendship, and there was always so much more laughter than tears.
I honor your birth and your life, Steve, today and every day. I hold you to that last promise you made to me, as I’ve kept–still keep–my promises to you.