I received this Facebook message Wednesday night from Kate Idleman Gulley, Carol and Ed’s daughter in law, when we got home:

“Just wanted to say we are enjoying corn, green beans and peaches for part of our dinner tonight courtesy of your kindness. Thanks. From Chad, Kaylah, Jordan and myself, thank you for truly caring. Although my family has not always understood the relationship you have with Ed and Carol we now see just how deeply you and Maria care for them. For that I just say thank you.”

It was kind and thoughtful of Kate to send that letter, I see her often now, and enjoy her wit and humor and energy, she is often working on the farm when I am visiting Ed and Carol. I wrote back a note of thanks, and I said I didn’t understand our friendship with Ed and Carol either.

i think friendship has a mind of its own, it happens when it wants to happen and runs and hides when it doesn’t.

Maria and I could hardly be more different from the Gulley’s if were programmed to be that way, yet from the first, we all felt an instant and powerful connection with each other.

I believe it was the creative parts of each of us that recognized one another – Carol with her writing, Ed with his art –  and then the rest was nature and heart and pure dumb luck.

We always seemed to get one another, we always laughed with  other, we never ran out of things to talk to with each other. It’s still true, we chat with Carol every day now, sometimes for hours. We still laugh and we never run out of things to talk about.

Soul connections are just soul connections, we have them with each other, and we have them with Ed and Carol.

Thanks to you Kate.  Ed and Carol are fortunate in being surrounded by people who love them.

“Don’t walk in front of me…I may not follow. 

Don’t walk behind me…I may not lead.

Walk beside me…just be my friend.”

• Albert Camus.

I told Kate that families like hers were a mystery to Maria and I, we have no families anywhere around us, not really. We rarely hear from any of them.

Carol is always talking about her large and devoted family, we are almost never talking about ours. Carol feels sorry for us, and always invites us to her family functions. We dread family functions.

I think Ed and Carol became family to us, and us to them. Family is natural to them, not really to us. It is a pleasure to get to know Kate and Chad and Jesse and Maggie and their families, it is rich experience to see them and be with them.

C.S.Lewis said a friend is born at the moment when one man  says to another, “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…”  That was always the way it was with Ed and me.

I know now that when you walk away from someone wondering what just happened, what did that mean, ponder and stew, he said, she said, that a friendship is not real or never  was. That never happened with Ed, or with Carol.

We may be different, but we are closely bound to the Gulleys through this wrenching time,  there is no place we would rather be. Maria and i –  or one or the other of us  – are with Carol just about every afternoon, and we have only grown more comfortable with one another as this new reality has unfolded. Sometimes we help.

I love the image of this exhausted and worried  family eating and love the fresh fruit and vegetables we brought.

This is the testing time for Carol, the hard time, she needs to see familiar faces she trusts and can talk to.

In my early hospice work, I always noticed a point when my dogs would turn away from the sick person and give their attention instead to the living.

It was almost as if the dogs knew, they probably did sense it, that there was nothing they could do for the dying, who gather themselves at the end of their days and have no need of dogs any longer.

I’ve learned this lesson, it is time for us to train our help on Carol, in one way,  Ed is already gone.

When people begin the process of dying, they almost visibly gather themselves, they no longer have the energy to pay any attention to the dogs or other animals around them. They just don’t have the strength.

But the people who love them have a need that is greater and the dogs turn to them to offer love and comfort. In the Gulley house, all of their big lumbering dogs – four of them – have moved from Ed’s room to the kitchen to be with Carol. They do not surround his bed any longer.

Ed’s Cocaktiel Oz has stopped singing to him. Ed can no longer pay attention to them, and that is the cue of the therapy dog to come, they don’t really understand sickness and death.

Carol is the one in need now, she is the one very much alive and struggling very hard through physical and emotional pain. It is almost unbearable for Carol to think of a life without Ed, but she is also coming to accept the reality around her, and the extent of his suffering.

Today, Lo Ann Sanders, a guiding spirit of the Army Of Good, came over with a huge tray of sandwiches and four giant pies. She sat with Maria and Carol in the kitchen while I sat with Ed.

Ed was up for much of the night afraid and in pain, and Carol spoke with the hospice staff and it was decided to start some Morphine with Ed today, it will calm him and help him sleep. And it did.

I well understand the meaning of Morphine in hospice work, it is the hospice promise to make the dying as comfortable as possible and give them comfort and  rest as they move into the next and final chapter. Hospice is not about helping people to die, it is about helping them to be comfortable and safe.

But there are choices to make. As the patient gets more and more uncomfortable, they are given medication to help them to sleep. Morphine is a huge turning point for any patient.

Carol understands this as well as anyone, she has no good choices to make, only hard and painful ones. She has some of the darkest days just ahead of her, and some of the most profound and meaningful.

We will be there with her, even as she is enveloped by a dedicated and committed family. She has another choice to make also, that is whether or not to have surgery for herself to torn ligaments and when.

That is not an  easy choice now, either.

It was painful for  us to see the pain she is in, even as she sits up with Ed all night, night after night. She is working to see her life beyond this time.

I sat with Ed for an hour, Maria talked with Carol, i love the sound of their voices, they talk so easily with one another. Carol and I are close, but I know she will never be as easy with me as she is with Maria or other women.

Men are like that, even when they are loved, it is hard for some women to be completely at ease around them. That is part of the sad story of men.

Ed and I were always so easy with one another. I feel we still are, bound in the silence. I am not easy with too many people.

I ask nothing, I just listen.

I read a book while Ed slept, he opened his eyes once and asked how I was, then fell back into a deep sleep. When we left I said goodbye, as i always did, he said something I couldn’t hear and we left.