Lillian

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Lilian is my oldest friend. We go way back; to proms and SunIn, and trips to the mall.

Lillian is dying.

When she received the diagnosis, she looked at her doctor and thanked him. And then she turned towards her husband and murmured, “get me out of here”. And so he did.

As Buddy, her husband, animates the retelling, he dramatically thrusts his arm forward.”Go North.” He declares.

Lilian didn’t deserve this fate. She was too young, too good. I moaned. How wretched that so many better candidates were passed over by death only to take my dear Lilian away.

According to Buddy, she texted her sister, Patricia, giving her a short list of things to do in anticipation of their arrival at the seashore. Then, she closed her eyes and whispered to Buddy,

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay*

I got the news a bit later, from Lilian’s sister. In a fit of fury, I threw some of my belongings in the backseat of my car, blew a kiss to my apartment and drove north to the sea.

Camden, Maine. Little did I know then that I wasn’t driving to Camden of today, nor of our childhood, rather I was traveling to Camden of a bygone era. Of shipbuilding, and summer people, of island hopping and of cool nights and warm long days.

Lilian had made the decision to die in 1905, not 2025. She had decided she much preferred to die a Victorian. No, not a Vegetarian. She preferred the early 1900’s to the hustle of 2025. Grammy’s old summer camp was prepped for the last visit. All artifacts of modernity were to be removed. TVs and modems and lamps. Microwaves and dumb phones too.

Buddy was in quite a state of despair when he called. What would he do without the internet? Sometimes I think Lilian chose 1905 just to trigger Buddy. I imagined her regaling the story of Buddy’s inanity and inability to feel anything with laughter and irreverence.

Without her at my side I lacked her diplomacy. “Buddy, really?” I asked. “Just please for the love of God shut up.” I added.

And he did.

Yes, Lilian was going Victorian. Not Caveman. She preferred a much more genteel time.

We embraced when I arrived. The nurse, Ronnie, had just begun the unsettling task of organizing the tools of modern day death. Lilian being Lillian, she refused most interventions rather adamantly, except for a collection of narcotics. We would call them tonics, I was told.

With a handful of books at her side, she began her descent, “Down the Mt Battie trail to the sea.” she whispered.

The first few days she slept.

We planned a small gathering of her intimates. In person or bust. She exclaimed forcefully. No zoom, no text. In person at this house by the sea.

We chose a date for a few days later as we acknowledged time was driving now.

Most days she rallied for a couple of hours. Buddy and I took turns holding vigil at her bedside. She waxed poetically and often was quite morose. On occasion I would snap her funny bone and she would burst into a fit of giggles.

But mostly, she slept. In my helplessness I took to holding a damp cloth to her forehead. It gave me time to learn the trails that time had etched in her face.

The party was, dare I say it, fun. I met people from her city life I had heard mention of but never met. I reacquainted with old friends of hers. But mostly, I sat in silence with her sister Patricia and pondered a world without the light of Lillian in it.

As dusk arrived. Ronnie gathered us all in a circle. It is time for Lillian to rest now. She has something for each one of you. Ronnie handed out tiny envelopes to each of us. It occurred to me that while I had been sleeping next door, Lillian and Ronnie had been burning the midnight oil. Later, I learned Lilian dictated each note to Ronnie.

It was a dark night in 1905. The oil lanterns remained off and there was no shimmer of dancing candles in sea air. Only a clear night sky and a waning gibbons illuminated our silent stroll to the sea’s edge. Our laughter and weeping filled the night air. We were, each one of us, inside the magical story written just for us.

People departed as the moon rose higher in the sky. It was only then that I felt prepared to read the last chapter of the last story. Her parting farewell gift to me.

Just one line awaited.

You were the love of my life. It read.

I took a pause and then all the moments of every moment of a 50 year old friendship flooded my heart. Of course it had always been so! How could I not have seen it? That which was so clear looking back.

I pondered a dramatic goodbye-motoring up the small hill and into the room where she lay dying. And quickly changed my mind. For we had already said goodbye. As I began to weep, I moved again towards the seashore and placed her final words on a bumpy ocean. I watched as the water speedily consumed her.

Once death has decided there is no turning back.

…

My friend Lilian has died, Departing 1905 she left us no trace to follow.

What she did leave in its place was the solace that memory holds to ease our spirits in the darkest of nights.

Sail on, my dear sweet Lillian!

*Poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay