Truthtelling

The fireworks are over, and the night falls silent, the air moist and thick. E. coaxes the dog out from under the kitchen table, where he is curled up and trembling, terrified of the July 4^th explosions. I join them for a walk.

When E. and I are agitated, we mobilize ourselves. We drop off our still-shaken pup and lap the block, debriefing each other on the evening. Close friends, a married couple, came to dinner. E. has known them all his life; he has been friends with their kids forever.

Now, one partner of the couple—the dad—is dying. He’s been sick for a few years, and his decline has become poignant.

At 16, E. has experienced more than his share of death: His uncle--my beloved brother--died when E. was in the second grade; a best friend succumbed to brain cancer in the eighth grade. Even then, E. was too young to digest life’s ending, the randomness of it, the finality.  

“I wish I had understood it then,” he says of his friend, who had been diagnosed in the sixth grade. “I wish I had known how it would end.”

I knew that his friend would die, but mother’s instinct, however misguided, compelled me to shield my boy from the truth for as long as possible. E. loved his friend. He was determined that hope and prayers would cure him. Now, he wonders if knowing the truth from the beginning would have steeled him, made him better able to withstand the loss once it came. He wonders if knowing our friend’s fate will make it easier for us.

I think of my brother, sick for 15 years, on the edge of death—and me on the edge with him--for four. I couldn’t have been more prepared. Or so I thought, until he finally died.

E. and I circle the block, processing our respective sadness.

“I have four reasons to not take life for granted,” he says, ticking off the names of four people he knows—including our friend—who have faced death young. “But it’s hard,” he says, reconsidering. “No one is grateful all the time. We forget. We live on automatic.”

We pass our house, the porch light beaming, the front door open, the air-conditioning beckoning. E’s skin glistens with sweat. We take another lap.