Someone I love called to let me know he is dying

And I died a little bit too.

At 18, a life and a lifetime ago, I instantly fell in love with this man. You could argue that it was inevitable and that it wasn’t really about him, but more about my loneliness. Really, what did I know about men? I had dates to the ball and prom but did those even count? I can’t even remember the names of those boys. And besides, those were boys and I was just a girl. But when I met this man? Well, I was already a woman.

This, of course, all ends very badly. By the time I turn 19, he brings another woman to my party. Everything else about this party disappears and what remains is the scene of me bringing them to the door saying goodbye forever. And yet … this still isn’t where the story ends, because somehow, he and I remained friends.

He went to grad school, I went to teach. He collected art, I took my MA. He traveled extensively, I got married. He was there at my wedding. He always referred to my husband as “the good man.” His wedding present was a hammock.

We kept each other in each other. When his father died horribly, I was there. In my own milestones, he was there. When he got married, he didn’t invite me and I gave him the cold shoulder for five years. But that didn’t last long.

I cannot even tell you this story accurately. The length of time between us makes me jump back and forth and I can’t tell anymore what happened when. Basta at some point, his young family moved to America. When he told me, I wasn’t worried. He left much of his furniture with me. Large cabinets, a dining table, pedestals for saints to sit upon, paintings. I had just built a new house and it was shiny and empty. In came his stuff and became part of my new life.

It was an unspoken tradition: when he was in Manila, I would accompany him for a day as we ate and walked and ate and walked and ate and walked. Our stories were always forward looking: what we wanted to accomplish, how quickly the children were growing up; how our spouses made us better, or worse, dependent on the vintage of the year.

Once in a while, that old attraction would appear. A smile, a pause, an angle would bring me to the past. He’d refer to that cluelessness of our years and we’d smile, acknowledge the attraction and laugh it away. Ours was not a story of what could have been but rather a story of gladness of what we had become instead.

Over time and space, geography irrelevant, what was an easy friendship became deep fidelity. There was still always so much to talk about. You take for granted that life will always be like this but nothing ever stays the same.

I have cancer, he said.

And not much longer to live.

His voice is clear and strong over the phone. I turn cold in hot, summer Manila. Nothing has prepared me for this. I don’t want to be the hysterical woman at the end of the other line. I turn somber and clinical. Pretend to ask questions like I know what I’m asking, when the questions I am asking come from watching medical dramas.

What’s the prognosis?

Is it lifestyle?

Would a transplant be possible?

We laugh. This is like a comedy, he says. A badly written one, I say.

On the phone he mapped out his demise. On the other end of the line, I realize, this is happening to me, too. He has the disease but I have it, too. He will have to bear it, but so will I. It is what love makes us do. He talks about his speedy weight loss, how he is gradually fading away. This is the part where I really begin to cry. I am not yet ready to lose the weight of him.

I think about him every day. Do not worry, he texts me. Let me worry, I answer back. I will not be around when my daughter marries. I will be, I promise. I still want to see India. I know, I reply, quickly. We’re all going to die anyway, right, Rica? So why worry? I could still die ahead? I offer that real possibility to make him feel better.

I want to write this because I have nothing good or wise to say. We all die, period. He will die on me. It will hurt. I may never recover. And then I will die, too. That is all. Right? It is all, if you do not believe.

In November last year, my friend and I met in New York, accidentally, without planning. I was there to watch over a cousin dying in a hospital. (The irony is not lost on me.) I messaged just to say I was in the States and that we could chat over the phone. Serendipitously, he was in New York on holiday. We met at Bryant Park.

It was a beautiful day. There were festive Christmas lights on the trees. Our breaths could be seen when we laughed out loud, which was often, like every 10 steps. We talked about how strange it was to get to this part of life as friends. How did we manage to get here?  I need to buy you something, he said. We need something to remember this by. I don’t need anything I pleaded. So he bought me cheesecake and I thought, how cheesy is this?

We were to part at the subway. We needed to cross an avenue block to get to the nearest train. I wore my gloves. My memory begins to latch on to tiny things: the dark of that block, the joy in my heart, all my good wishes for him, love erasing the usual barriers of time and space to coalesce on this one moment that feels designed by someone greater than ourselves.

You know I love you, don’t you? I say on the phone with no fear or shyness.

You know I love you, too, right? He says without pause.

I know, I said. I knew you loved me even before you knew it.

Grabe, Rica, ikaw ba si Lord?

We laugh, richly. I suspect until one of us dies in the days and months and years to come, this will be our tenor. It is the tenor of truth.