Having said good-by--

I am so glad I went to say good-by to Rob.  I was very nervous about going, and it was one-foot-in-front-of-the-other drudgery  getting to the airport and through the security nuisance, waiting around, finding a seat on the plane, arriving at LAX, getting a cab.

But when I arrived at his house, I was welcomed into  a zone where people spoke the truth about the scariest thing in the world, and that was a big relief.

Rob insisted on getting up and dressed to talk to me in the living room, and he made his way tentatively up the stairs from his bedroom with the help of his partner, Emanuel, and a walker.  He settled in a big comfortable chair, and I pulled a side chair close so I could hear him (his voice is dimmed by illness and morphine).  We did not review times we had in junior high, high school, or college, which is somehow what I'd expected.  Instead, it was very much in the moment, where he finds himself right now and what he thinks about it.   After about 45 minutes, he was fatigued.  Emanuel reappeared, and we guided Rob to a sofa and urged  him to take a nap.   I reached out and  touched his smooth bald head.  He dropped off instantly   I watched  him sleep and stitched on a label I'm making for Carling and Scott's wedding quilt.

After about an hour, Rob woke up, and I sat next to him on the sofa  and  said what I'd gone to say and had come close to saying during the two years he's been ill.  I'd  kept putting it off, and I was very lucky that I got one last chance to say it.  Lots of people want to see Rob now, but I was among the last who will get to.  Note to self.

Then I called a cab to take me back to LAX,  and Rob insisted on taking his walker out on a balcony so he had a view of a nearby cross street and he could make sure I gave the cab company the right street name.  I left and started to cry the minute the wheels of the plane left the runway at LAX,  knowing  I was leaving him for the last time.

POSTSCRIPT:  Nora Ephron said in the director's comments for "Julie/Julia":  "I do think writing a blog would be one of the hardest things you could do, writing every single day, that every single thing you did, you'd barely experience it before you'd be processing it into material for your blog.  You would be like a predator sitting watching your own life.." 

True.  It took me some days to decide to post this account, although I wrote it right after I returned from Los Angeles.