Surely the doctors were wrong last month when they gave my brother-in-law six weeks to two months to live.
He was too vigorous, all day every day, when we weekended with his family in the cool Arizona desert where they were on holiday.
Yes, he has faded from husky and ruddy to pale and haggard. He has lost scores of pounds combatting pancreatic cancer. Tall and now lanky, he still moves with a sharp, certain step — definite and defiant as he always has been once he is sure of his position.
At the Beginning
Even after all of these years, there is something romantically adventurous about backing out of your garage into the chilled 4 o’clock darkness on a winter Friday morning to begin a first-time journey.
Southern Arizona, nearly 500 miles away, was our destination.
Who knew what we would find?
Since the doctors have pronounced their irreversible verdict, my strongest worry was committing the quintessential faux pas, such as discussing a future event, in the near term, but still days or weeks or months after doctors have said he should be gone.
One of the maudlin pre-arrival stories we heard concerned the family’s trip to the Grand Canyon the day before.
Why-Me? anger is common, we are told, when ailing persons have been given a deadline.
En route to the Grand Canyon, whizzing past landmarks, my brother-in-law, who has spent his life in the East, muttered, wistfully, “This is the only time I will see these places. You can see them many more times.”
They Were Wrong
Reverberating in an echo chamber from their hometown, visitors warned that we would scarcely recognize him.
Oh, how wrong they were.
Happily.
Our families shmoozed briefly last spring when Pop died three weeks before his 94th birthday.
But our last real visit together was more than six years ago.
If you had overheard three days of nonstop happy chatter over the weekend, you, too, might be skeptical of the doctors’ conclusion.
He is deeply involved in daily living, in global events, in his children’s daily lives, in his diet, in the nuances of the Obama administration, in his devoted wife, — too invested to give up and just go away.
Half-a-dozen hours from Los Angeles, neither Diane nor I knew what to expect when we arrived at the home of their young bachelor son.
Could we resist gawking at the man we were told had morphed into a ghost of his formerly rigorous self?
They greeted us as enthusiastically as if we were making our regular Friday morning drop-in.
Immediately, my brother-in-law ushered us into the sun-splashed, spacious backyard.
Around a circular white table, speckled with libations fit for a schoolboy, we whizzed through 10 consecutive hours of Have I Ever Told Yous?
Periodically, there was a miniscule pause while he and I dashed to the Circle K market for refills.
Dinner scarcely affected the absence of punctuation in nearly every sentence — especially between the girls.
When we visited a nearby national park, we took more pictures than they do at the Oscars. On a mountain tour, my brother-in-law snapped images of all but two cacti in that part of Arizona.
As Shabbos ended just before dinner, I left for an hour-long stroll across the rapidly blackening floor of the sparsely settled desert.
Gazing up, I was certain even astronauts never have been treated to such a vast expanse of a star-studded sky.
They twinkled at me, and they winked, I hope, at my brother-in-law’s doctors, saying “Just watch us — we are going to fool you.”
Down the dark desert path I tread, I kept thinking that this could not be all for my brother-in-law. Over the decades, we have had too little time together.
I was gone so long my wife and nephew came out searching for me. But I needed the solitary time.
Sunday morning dawned sumptuously— but only for those who value nature over the fragile longevity of my brother-in-law.
I ate the breakfast my sister served as slowly as I could without attracting attention. She and I had a lusty cry before we left.
And she encouraged me to openly invite them to Southern California. Continuity, tomorrow — they are vital.
The final words, as every contented man knows, emanate from his wife.
As my brother-in-law and sister stood on their front steps, cheerily smiling and waving, my wife, standing at the car door, said, to them and to me, “I don’t want to go.”
Neither did I. Neither did, or does, my brother-in-law.
