It makes me wonder how I would have handled it if I was a witness? Would I have called? Maybe. Probably not. She's a woman of particular faith; and it's too late for a conversion, and she gets a ticket to the new system anyway, so what a convenient excuse to do nothing. I haven't seen her in two years or more anyway.
I got the call from a mutual friend about a week and a half ago, Betsy, an old friend and work associate was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer the day before. Absent the odd miracle, that gives you maybe 3 months to live, with chemo.
She's already through the first round of chemo, and feeling very weak. She had a visitor when I called, Jana, who I'd met when I did portraits of Betsy, Jana, and another bald woman, about 6 years ago when they were all going through chemo for breast cancer.
I've seen Betsy hurt by, and disapointed in, certain people a time or two, but I've never heard her say an unkind word about anyone.
Betsy and I were working together on 9/11/2001. Fortunately, it was the type of job that needed my full focus at key times, and that broke me away from a constant and increasing worry about my daughter and exwife vacationing in Manhattan. At about 5:00 pm, after 8 hours of phone calls, waiting, worrying, more phone calls, and increasingly more worry, Betsy held me as long as I needed to be held as I let it all out when I finally got the call saying Teddy and Lannie were OK.
Today, on the phone, we made fairly small talk. I'll go and see her next week, and we may or may not speak of death. If we do, it will be her decision. I'll be completely unarmed with Watchtowers or Bibles or 32 page brochures, and if her faith is comforting her, I'll be nothing less than grateful for her faith. I hope we don't speak of death, because I think she probably handles this stuff with far more grace than my emotions allow me. But if we do, and I, or we, end up crying, I'm sure we'll end up laughing too.
As we said goodbye, I told her "I love you", and got immediately choked up. She told me she loved me, and I said goodbye, hopefully w/o her hearing my voice break.
Betsy's on the right (sorry for the crappy scans):
(the b/w doesn't show it, but there are three red lipstick kisses on my head)