6 December 1942--20 October 1999
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6 December 1942--20 October 1999 |
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My Friend Judy, a Tribute by Melaine Layton
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Stricken With Terminal Lung Cancer, My Sister Designs A Remarkable Goodbye For Her Family & Friends
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This is how I remember Judi. At a table with friends, clutching a coffee cup, engaged in conversation, laughing. If ever there was a person who loved a good story, it was Judi, especially when the story was about some absurdity of life. Intelligence never impressed her, but quirkiness did. She was drawn to those who had a different take on things, although that alone was not enough. They also had to talk about their own humiliations and laugh until tears came to their eyes. She loved the ridiculous. I'm still trying to puzzle out the last ten months of my sister's life. I didn't know she was sick until Tracey called and blurted out "Mark! I have terrible news. Judi just killed herself!" Those words slammed me back with the feeling of instantaneous, crushing loss, then everything fell into place. In fact I did know she was sick, but Judi had so deftly steered me away from the truth that I came to believe it was a thyroid episode caused by wrong medication. Back in June Beau had called; he sounded really shaken. "Mom has lung cancer," he said. A friend of hers called to tell him. She's in the hospital. He hasn't been able to get hold of her. He doesn't know what's going on. When Beau spoke those
terrible words, lung cancer, a rush of adrenalized terror swept over me. I had anticipated
this call as I watched Judi smoke and cough for years, but she had quit back in the early
'90s to my great relief; I thought the danger had passed. Now Beau was telling me it had
not passed; the horrible moment had arrived and what anguish it would bring to us
all—pain and suffering for Judi, loss of our sister, mother, grandmother at an age
too young to die. The only thought I had was to race to her side and show by my actions
that if she were going to die it would be with us ringed around her, traveling that path
as far as we could go, locked together as a family. Judi, Tracey, and I had done much the
same with our mother from the moment of her diagnosis with cancer in ’92 till her
death in ’93. During the last 8 months each of us flew to Idaho Falls to be with her
for two-week shifts. Judi would know we were now well versed in this routine and would see
it begin the moment I walked through the door. But Beau told me to wait until he found out
from her doctor, not from her friend, what exactly was happening. When he called the next
day he said there was good news! It was a conjecture on the friend’s part, not a
diagnosis of the doctor, and in fact it appeared not to be cancer. Judi was suffering from
dehydration. They had given her fluids, and now she was returning to normal. In fact, she
was feeling so well they were releasing her from the hospital. My gloom turned to
exquisite joy. What relief to replace the horror of lung cancer with some harmless oddity
causing dehydration! Beau would fly to Denver to find out the specifics, but it seemed the
crisis was over. I called Judi at home, and
she sounded just great. Laughing and bubbly about this whole hospital business, it was
something to be brushed off as just another good story to tell in the future. She
wasn’t quite sure what had happened except that when she was sitting at her computer
reading email it began to look like Bulgarian. That’s when she made her way to the
hospital to discover she was suffering from dehydration. But she’s feeling fine now,
she said, and indeed her voice sounded very strong to me, a bit too strong; I assumed she
was just animated. Only later would I learn she was shouting through an oxygen mask. Although I expressed my
relief that she was okay, my concern remained. Something had forced her to the hospital,
and lung cancer was mentioned. But I couldn’t reconcile cancer with the energy and
humor I heard coming from her over the phone. Furthermore, if she did have cancer,
certainly they wouldn’t release her to return home but instead would be plying her
with tests and readying her for an operation and chemo in a desperate attempt to keep her
alive; such dramatic events could hardly go undiscovered. I swept away all of these
thoughts, because she was now home and chatting as if the whole thing had been a lark.
Still, I begged her to get a complete physical so she could assure herself and us that
everything was okay. Especially, get a chest x-ray. I can only wonder what she thought of
such a silly request. Chest x-ray? she might have said. Oh, I’ve had my chest
x-rayed, and that’s why I’m sitting here at home. Tethered to an oxygen tank.
Waiting. I called again the next day
when Beau was there. She said she was eating like a horse and drinking gallons of fluid.
The problem arose, she said, because the pharmacy had filled her thyroid prescription
incorrectly; they gave her a medicine that was exacerbating her problem, the fools! At
last she had an answer to her dehydration and all the other strange symptoms that forced
her to the hospital. Beau confirmed she was eating well and said she looked fine. My
worries dwindled away. It was all a ruse though,
and Beau was participating. He had rushed to Denver, because he put two and two together
and knew it to be cancer despite her protestations to the contrary. First, there was her
miserable visit to Seattle in January. The weather was awful—unending rain and high
humidity made her asthma severe, so she claimed. But certainly she was having problems
breathing. A month later Beau received documents in the mail regarding her will. She
didn’t explain the reason for it, and he didn’t ask. Then her friend called
about the lung cancer, and finally it all made sense. He went to Denver and confronted
her, and although she was vociferous in her denials he persisted till she acknowledged the
truth. Cancer. Terminal. Then she swore him to secrecy. He was to tell no one, not Tracey,
not me, not Michelle, that was her wish, her demand. And he honored her wish bearing this
terrible knowledge alone, revealing nothing. Three months later on October 20th, 1999 she took everyone by surprise. “Judi just killed herself!” Tracey said in an anguished voice. A friend once commented to
me how noble he thought suicide was. I disagreed with that sweeping statement saying it
depended on motive. Perhaps it’s noble if the person does it out of some rational
necessity or selfless reason, and if so, then I can easily honor Judi in that way. Judi
didn’t want to die. She said in her letters she was “greedy for more” time,
but she saw it wasn’t to be, and no amount of wishing would change that simple fact.
She now crafted a remarkable ending for herself which we would discover in a slow
unfolding over the next couple of weeks as bits and pieces came to light. From January
till October, while we bantered harmlessly back and forth in our email, Judy was in and
out of the hospital as her breathing became difficult and her other systems broke down.
Occasionally her misery would show up in her messages, but I never caught on, because in
the next sentence there would be the easy patter about friends or weather. Somewhere during this time
she finalized her will, packed boxes of her little things as gifts for friends, even
called her charity to come on such and such a day to pick up odds and ends. She wrote out
detailed instructions: No funeral! Cremation! Do with the remains what you want. The roof
is relatively new, so don’t worry about it. The small water damage on the wall is
caused by something else. The new tile is for the upper bathroom. You can either retile or
sell it for $600. The insurance on Hal has lapsed. And she ends with what is a wonderful
statement about the simplicity of life and death: “The car has a new
alternator.” Also during this time...she bought a gun. And, as we arrived at her
house, so fresh with the small necessities of daily activity—the clothes
hanging in the closet, the clock ticking on the side table—we discovered that
Judi had left each one of us a priceless jewel, a goodbye letter. The letters are
remarkable in their tone. She doesn’t want to die, but…there you have it. The
choice is no longer hers to make. She recalls the special moments, says what she wants
from us, there is no hysteria, no angst, no philosophical wailing, the cadence of the
sentences makes it all seem so natural, and in the end the letters do their job. You stand
up and salute. ### With the press of this key I now upload your website to the Internet with love. I push away from my desk and pour myself a glass of wine. Here's to you, Jude. |
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