A day at a time

If I thought about all the things I need to do in the next few days I’d probably just go back to bed. The only way to manage is to do what needs to be done in the next half an hour, and then the next and then the next.

I’ll be going back to Indiana on Friday, this time for my friend’s funeral. She lost the fight Saturday night, but we who are left comfort ourselves knowing she wouldn’t have wanted to live as she had the past few months.

Nancy and I “met” online 10 years ago, through a weight-loss list for followers of the Atkins plan. A series of conversations revealed we had much more in common than extra body weight, and our friendship was forged over our knitting needles.

Her diagnosis (cancer of the pancreas) came last January, a week after her husband retired from his pediatric practice. She did everything she and her doctors could think of. In September she was declared free of cancer. I still remember taking that joyful phone call.

A month later, she called to say the cancer had returned, there was nothing more medicine could do for her and she might have six months to live. She wanted seven, so she could meet her adopted granddaughter, who is due to arrive from China in the late spring.

She got two.

How cruelly ironic that this elegant, witty, wonderful woman battled her weight for the past 40 years, only to end up on a feeding tube, unable to eat solid food unless it had been pulverized in a blender and served with a spoon.

I’m sure going to miss her.

So. This week I get ready to travel again, from West Virginia to northern Indiana and then to Tennessee for a week. By the time I get back home, January will be nearly half gone.

Thanks for reading.