Sitting with Gene

Okay, I am being tested. I mean, I think I am being tested. Why else would I find myself willingly sitting with someone who is dying, whom I don't know all that well?

Because I have seen in just the last two months what a fine person he is. And because no one should pass on without another human nearby.

There are several of us taking turns with Gene, of course. Gene is at Rachel's house, and has been there for five days now. He responded at first to glasses of fresh cabbage juice, supposedly to keep him from throwing up so much. But his strength has been leaving his body each day. We think it is a matter of a day or two, or three, before he finally lets go.

We are all there for him, to ease his pain and help his last days and hours be as gentle as they can.  I am returning for a few hours later this afternoon. That enables Rachel to be present at one of the Lubec Landmarks artist's receptions, as she does every second Saturday afternoon in summer (when the gallery shows change ... she's the organization's president).

I'm not scared, and I'm not upset. Rather, I am honored.

Another friend is dying ...

I chose to move to Lubec after Frank died because of all the friends I have here. Rachel has been the best friend among many friends. I soon learned that Rachel is a dear friend to all. Her heart is as big and wide as her open door. Friends are in and out of her house, three doors up from me, constantly.

Circles of friends overlap here. In mid-June, Gene moved back to Lubec, where he had been living "off the grid" for more than five years. He spent most of his life in Delaware, working in carpentry. He discovered Lubec, as we all come to do, and stayed. Now 66, Gene is a kind soul who found in Lubec a place full of gentleness.

Two years ago Gene got stomach cancer. He returned to Delaware for treatments, until doctors said they couldn't do anything else. So he had hospice care ... until he decided he wanted to be back in the woods again.

First he got a campsite in Pennsylvania's Poconos. Hospice nurses looked in on him everyday for three weeks. Then he realized he really wanted to be home in Lubec -- where he has a small boat and a recreational license to fish for lobsters. He also has a small collie who goes everywhere with him. Back here, Gene has been on the water nearly daily, when he isn't visiting with friends around town. He brings them the lobsters he catches and the clams he digs.

I saw him a week ago, and he told me he's been sick lately. Rachel saw him more recently, and said that it's time for Gene to come live with her. This morning, Gene called her from his place in the woods of North Lubec. It really is time for Gene to move into Rachel's downstairs, and be nurtured and fed and loved by his friends. I think he realizes that.

Dashed by a dream

Frank doesn't show up in my dreams much at all. But when he does, it's a powerful dream. I'm not one who talks about dreams at all, but this one just struck at my heart. It went like this: I learned that Frank was "out there," that there was a chance that I could see him in three years. The dream vaguely had him in a prison, and that I came across an address for which he could receive my letters. That gave me hope that I could communicate, and he would be returning in three years.

Then I woke up. It was 3:41am. Frank's dead, I realized. He's not coming back. It was all a dream.

Benefit for a cancer patient

Few weeks ago, I saw a flyer in town: Benefit supper and auction for so-and-so, Sunday, Aug. 12, all afternoon. I marked it on my calendar.

Even better, I followed through and went. The parking lot was packed. Once inside, food was plentiful and people were left standing as the auction started. The older man with Stage 4 cancer, accompanied by his wife, was seated up close to the auction action.

I've seen these local auctions where a home-baked pie may bring $5, and the bathroom faucet donated by the  local hardware shop may bring $8. Sometimes they can't give this stuff away. But this one seemed different. A blueberry pie went for $50. Some home-smoked salmon went for $40. And when the $10 gift card for Uncle Kippy's Restaurant came up, I won it for $20.

This wasn't a crowd with money. These people were the man's own extended family of cousins and everyone else who grew up alongside the family. This was a crowd filled with neighbors and friends, and lots of love.

The least I could do today was go and support the man and his family. It's just so easy to remember how wonderful and giving everyone else had been for Frank and me, back in January 2011 when our friends organized a benefit supper and auction for us. It was amazing to experience all that love and generosity back in 2011. It was amazing to see something like that all over again today, for another family in need.

The annual town meeting

Not a single thing happens that I don't relate to Frank.Take last night, for example. Lubec held its annual town meeting. I went by myself, as I'm having to do for all things these days. In the past, I've always gone to to town meetings (Machias, and Franklin before that) with Frank.

Frank never missed a town meeting, as long as I knew him, until his illness kept him from Machias' town meeting in 2011. He loved  being part of a good public discussion. He always found a point, or two or three, to make. He took his town meeting responsibilities very seriously. The critical thinker in him emerged, and he made points that others hadn't yet considered.

Could not help myself thinking of Frank last evening in town-meeting mode.

Bought a lawnmower ...

Gee, nearly two weeks since my last post. You'd think I'd have run out of things to say, with respect to losing Frank and forging a life on my own now.

Nope. Frank is in my thoughts and in my heart every single minute.

Like, last weekend. Campobello was holding its first-ever, island-wide yard sale, with 27 families taking part. I justified my going by saying, "If Frank were here, he'd want to go, too."

The best thing I bought (only thing, besides a coffeemaker, which I needed to replace because my coffeemaker went missing in all the packing) was a lawnmower. A great, big, fancy push mower with bells and whistles. The retail price was $340 in the store (the old man told me), and I got it for $150.

I have to laugh, because Frank had a very strange history with lawnmowers. He was never a friend of yards and gardens, I don't think. I believe that during his 20 years in the Franklin farmhouse, he let his lawn grow high, "prairie-style." But -- once I met him and moved in, not my style.

I got him to buy a mower right before our wedding in June 2003. Actually, because it was the cheapest model you could buy, I don't think it lasted into the next summer, when we had moved into the Machias house.

So for all those Machias years, our lawn didn't get properly mowed much. We'd borrow the neighbor's lawnmower, or Frank would use the weed-whacker lawnmower-style. Or we would pay the neighbor to mow our yard. I kept threatening to go buy a proper lawnmower, but Frank would always say we didn't need one, or we didn't have the money for one.

Naturally, at the first sighting of a good lawnmower at a yard sale (last Saturday), I grabbed onto it. It's not here, yet, because I'm waiting for our friend Mike Shannon to turn up here with his pick-up truck, so we can go pick it up. But once I get it, my plan is to use it. Regularly, too, Frank. Just watch me!

Frank's best friend has died -

Last week brought the news that Gordon McRae, Frank's best friend for about 20 years, died of a sudden heart attack. There wasn't a funeral, because Gordon didn't believe funerals are worth the expense. I can sure see Gordon saying that. Frank, on the other hand, planned his own funeral, down to the detail that Gordon would carry his urn of ashes. Gordon did that twice, first at the Catholic service for Frank in January, and then for his military burial at the Veterans' Cemetery in Augusta, in March.

I love what Gordon said more than once within my earshot over the years. Gordon had won a Purple Heart when he served in Vietnam, during the same years when Frank was a Seabee at Little Creek, Virginia. Gordon said that if he had to go into Vietnam all over again, he'd want no one else but Frank by his side.

So, Gordon is gone. Gordon and Amy had been very good friends to us in Frank's last year. Amy and I got closer, and more importantly, Gordon and Frank got closer. Frank was 61 when he died, and Gordon was 63. They had become friends since the early years of the 20th Maine. They had come to visit Frank at our house in November, in some of the last weeks that he was home.

I last saw both Gordon and Amy in late May, when the 20th Maine came to Cherryfield to dedicate a Veterans' Park by the river. Gordon and the rest of the 20th Maine fired Gordon's cannon ... he rarely went anywhere without his cannon.

It's comforting to think that Frank was "there" to welcome Gordon, wherever "there" is. Frank and Gordon are together again -- I know that. And no doubt they are talking about the Civil War and cannons.