Last night, Carol messaged me to ask if I would be interested in speaking at Ed’s funeral service later in this week. It was thoughtful and gracious of her, she was asking if I wanted to play  a role in Ed’s funeral.

I knew the instant i read her message that I couldn’t do it.

I think it was at that moment that I realized just how deeply I felt about Ed’s sickness and death and how much it had affected me, and how little I had come to terms with my own feelings about it.

I wrote back to Carol that I would rather not speak at Ed’s funeral, that it would be too hard for me to do. That surprised me and opened the gate for me, I turned to Maria and said “the truth is, I can’t do it.” My head was in a whirl.

We both looked at one another, and I felt a great surge of pain and sadness.

I am never uncomfortable speaking in public, I’ve been on a score of book tours all over the country and never once felt uncomfortable standing at a podium talking to large groups- sometimes hundreds – of people. Like Ed, I always felt destined to tell my story, i always assumed somebody would want to hear it.

But I know there has always been a loneliness in me, a sense of being apart, of standing outside of the circle. This feeling has protected me as well as isolated me, is beautiful to me as well as sad.

For the past couple of months I’ve come to see Ed and Carol almost every day, and watched this strong and proud man melt away in front of me, reduced to diapers and unable to sit himself up, go to the bathroom, or even speak and his very soul and flesh was eaten away bit by bit.

I have also watched his loving and devoted family suffer along with him, as the person they knew and the life they know began to come apart. It was very painful to see Carol, who is also my friend, in such pain. It was very difficult to see Ed so frightened and shattered.

I wrote about it every day, determined to fulfill my promise to Ed to record his death in the hope it might be useful to others.

I didn’t see it, but of course it took a toll me. I protected myself by refusing to see it. Ed wanted badly to share this chapter in his life, he asked my help. I agreed. It is, after all a great story, a universal one. And I loved Ed.

To do this, I had to slip into my old reporter mode, I had to detach myself and focus on the feelings and emotions of others, I worried about Carol and Ed’s kids, and of course Ed.  I was fine, I told anyone who asked, I didn’t have brain cancer. I hate the idea of stealing other people’s grief and trouble.

Going over there made me feel as if I were doing something useful, and sometimes it was helpful, and I think it was valuable and useful – I’m proud of what I wrote, of what Ed and I did together in our final act of friendship – but the truth is there is really nothing someone like me can really do to halt the onrush of this awful thing.

There is an endemic helplessness to watching and observing someone else’s suffering, rather than doing. I am not a hospice nurse, they are built differently.

I could distract Ed and tell his story and bring Carol some fruit and vegetables and books, but none of us had the power to stop this onrushing train.

Yesterday, when I went to the farm Maggie, Ed’s daughter, was in great pain, she worried she should have done more to help her father, she was so upset and I took her hands and asked her if she believed in God.

Yes, she said, she did, and so I urged her to let God do God’s work, and trust him to make those decisions about Ed and his life. Don’t play God, I said, it is too great a weight.

I don’t believe in God the way the Gulley family and many other people do, but when I realized – I knew – that I couldn’t speak at Ed’s funeral, a completely natural thing for me to do, then I realized I needed to give myself a talk and allow myself to feel, rather than simply record what was happening in front of me.

It would not be honest to hide my own feelings while writing about the feelings of others. It is time for me to understand what I am feeling and acknowledge those emotions.

I can’t only live through the mind, the soul has a right to a seat at the table.

Monday night, I read some posts online, some people were assuring Carol that Ed was flying with the angels now, and this struck me as curious and bothered me, it wasn’t something I could picture Ed doing happily, or at all.

I was going to write a hopefully funny spoof of the idea, a bit of humor and satire picturing what such a flight with Ed would be like, him flapping his arms in soldered tractor parts and talking about his cows.

I think I needed to laugh.

But I couldn’t post the piece, the whole idea of it bothered me. Something held me back, it sounded an alarm. I never hold back on what I write.

I rarely doubt the point of anything I write, but this one troubled me. Something was  wrong. It was the wrong piece, it was a distraction, it was too soon and too glib.

Bit by bit, I saw something was wrong. I couldn’t sleep. I was shutting down. I felt the old waves of loneliness and depression. I was up all night, drifting and shaking into the dark and familiar space that lives in a part of all of us.

I could barely speak to Maria all night and we rarely have trouble speaking with one another. It was a long night.

This morning, as the sun rose, she sat up with me and we talked, and she told me the truth – we do that for each other.  I just had not dealt with my own feelings about Ed’s illness and his death, she said, it was such a big part of my life these past months.

At I listened to her, I thought of course, of course, I could never get through a talk about Ed in this way, and I was not about to break down in front of a big field full of people.

And then I saw the light and knew what I had to do, I had to come downstairs and sit at the computer and write some truth. My place of safety and strength, the way I find myself. I may be slow to grasp many things, but I believe in the truth, and I decided some years ago that I will not lie about myself any longer, or ever again.

I have no secrets now, and that is the safest place I have ever been.

So I need to stop a bit and feel a bit and be deliberate about my life today.

I need to take some pictures and herd some sheep and hang out with Red and Maria and go see Ali in our office in Schaghitcoke and plan some good. I don’t think I can cry, I rarely cry, I learned not to do that.

I need to get familiar with myself, to go inward and say hello.

I do understand why I hide this pain, it was so dangerous and frightening in my life to show real emotion to anyone – the Gulley family seems able to do this quite openly and honestly. Their lives are not perfect  but they feel safe enough to feel.

I learned from my earliest days not to do it. Never. I can tighten up like the tightest drum.

It’s ironic, but there is another side to this truth,  this very caution also enabled me to sit with Ed day after day and be calm and steady and write. That is the awful gift of the reporter.  A police sergeant, a friend, cautioned me to give up police reporting, I was handling what I saw too well, he said.

So I did.

If I didn’t  hide my emotions I wouldn’t have been able to sit with Ed day after day. So it is a gift as well as a defensive trait.

This exchange with Carol revealed my own pain and loneliness as well as hers, and at the end, Ed’s. He was beyond the reach of any of us, and if there is a God, I hope Ed is in his or her hands.

The spiritual task is not to hide from this loneliness or to let myself drown in it, but to see it and speak the truth about it and understand its source.

Then to bring it into the light.

Then the sadness loses its power, it is not a task of the mind but a task of the heart, and I tend to live in the mind and shy away from the heart. My life with Maria has changed that, but it will always be there.

So my loneliness was revealed to me as the other side of my gift to watch and see and capture what is in front of me, and that is precious to me. Once I experienced this, I found my loneliness to be not only tolerable but fruitful.

What has alway seemed something that is painful and sorrowful has also opened the way to a deeper knowledge of what some people call God and what I see as quite sacred but do not really have a name for. Perhaps it is God under a different name.

So I need to be honest with the people who read this, and more importantly, with myself.

So I cannot speak at Ed’s funeral:  me, a public person who has spoken a thousand times in front of strangers.

I just have too much feeling and emotion inside of me for him and his family, and his death, much of which I am only beginning to see and understand.

This is the right decision for me.

And yes, I will absolutely and soon write about Ed flying with the angels. Every time I think of it, I smile, and I know Ed would get the greatest kick out of the idea, he would be happy to give the angels his lecture on the price of milk.