Hit Me

We spend a third of our day sleeping, and the majority of us spend the second third figuring out how to survive. Then we take another third to make all that sleeping and surviving worth the effort. Maybe we’d have a clearer picture if we didn’t live all the thirds in the same 24 hours. But we do.

Most of us, anyway. I’ve had a few, just a few, friends who were crazy rich. Born with millions of dollars in the hip pocket of their diaper. In the early years we weren’t so different. They’d step and fall, I’d step and fall. The major difference would be in our landing. But I developed cool little calluses on my butt, which would serve it well as I would fall many times thereon.

As would R, a friend who is dying right now. Save for a miracle, he has a few months.

I remember, before he was sick (long, long before), R, G and I discussed how, if one of us had some horrible, debilitating disease, he or she would jump off a cliff. Live fast, die young, etc. I think champagne (at the least!) had a role in our discussion, and as I recall, champagne was something the jumper would carry to the cliff. We made a pact: No heroic measures.

R is taking heroic measures now. He’s absorbing every humiliation a disease can throw at a human being, and he’s willing to try any whiffle ball the medical profession suggests he toss back. As to the lengths R will go to wring every second he can out of life, consider the respirator and the feeding tube somewhere at the starting line.

I think you can compare life to a card game, else why would it still be so popular. You get dealt a hand; you rely on smarts, strategy, looks, and on knowing your opponent. You try to seduce the dealer. And if things go south, and you’ve got guts, you stay at the table while they shuffle the deck. Because you never know. You just never do.

R was born with a pretty rough hand, but he turned things around. G, who took the gun to his mouth, had some aces that he squandered on the way. G walked away from the table; R refuses to leave.

The best R can hope for now is an unlikely, almost impossible draw to an inside straight. I think it’s very courageous he stays in the game. His very conscious will to live gives each of my 24 hours, even the sleeping and working part, a new significance.

Because R is right -- you never know. You just never do.