A friend of mine had a terminal illness, and I went to visit him at a medical facility. Perhaps that is a dark sentence to begin a story, not brimming with enticement, but it’s a real one.

On the way over to see him I felt like you do when life serves itself up pretty raw, and you have to step up and take a bite. As someone I know puts it, life has a way of getting “lifey.” There was a whole world of things I’d rather be doing, but nothing that I ultimately wanted to do more.

When I got there, Mike was watching a Major League Baseball playoff game on television. He was weak but alert, and after a relatively short conversation, it was apparent that his wish was for the two of us to watch the game together, so that’s what we did.

This was in October 2009, and I don’t remember which teams were playing, what day of the week it was, what time of day, or whether I stayed until the end of the game. I do remember that while we were watching, we kept commenting to each other about the play on the field.

 

It seems fitting I think of that day at this time of year, as a new baseball season began last week.

At no time did we talk about the long view of his life, the meaning of life, his imminent death, our history together, or whether the individual consciousness continued after the body took its last breath. I have had those talks with a couple of other friends at their end time. But none of that with Mike.

When Mike and I said our goodbye, I felt both of us were comfortable with the time we’d spent together, that neither of us had angst about our not attempting to take a deeper dive with our words. Sometimes the most resonant voices are those without sound.

And that was it. I walked out to my car and drove away to the other things on my “to do” list for that day.

Mike died a couple of days later, without my visiting or communicating with him again. We didn’t get the chance to watch the World Series together that year, but he made it as far into the playoffs as he could.

Usually I try to reach for a fitting sentence to wrap up a column, but in this case the ending took care of itself.

Author’s note: Dear Reader, when I look at the columns I’ve written for the Gazette, I see the subject of mortality coming up somewhat often, more often than when I was younger writing columns. I guess I’ll plead that I just had my 75th birthday, and I find it as difficult to keep death out of my mind as I did to keep sex out of my mind at 17. I pledge that I shall make a greater effort to veer away from the topic of the Grim Reaper in my future columns. I make no such pledge about the topic of sex. In keeping with that pledge, my next column, which I am already several drafts into, has to do with staying alive. It’s about the day I crossed paths with the world of South Boston gangster WhiteyBulger.)

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist for the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.

 

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