Maria and I left Susan’s hospital bed around 8:30 or 9 p.m. Wednesday. I expected to see her today; she was breathing slowly but steadily. It was clear the end was close. When I got home,  I wrote about the visit, and I noticed my cell phone line had gone dead.

This worried me, as I told the nurses to call me if there was any change.

I finished my blog post, and then my blog suddenly went dead, I couldn’t get on it, and neither could anyone else.

When the phone came back on, there were texts from Donna and Susan’s brother Steven telling me that Susan had died.

And a voicemail from the night nurse asking me to call.

“My blog is down,” I yelled to Maria, and then a minute later, “Susan died a few minutes ago.”

Maria came in, smiling, tearing up. “That’s Susan’s way of saying goodbye…” The thought stunned me for a second, but then I thought it just might be true. Susan often asked me, “how you doing, bro?” and I thought I heard her saying, “goodbye, Bro.”

I felt this strongly, but I can’t say for sure it was real or was something I wanted to be true. It was eerie to me that Susan died almost to the minute my blog shut down. What are the odds of that?

Susan would know precisely how to reach me and get my attention. I sit up straight when my precious blog goes down; it feels as if I lost an arm. I take it as a final goodbye.

But I did lose a friend, a complex one.

Before she got too sick, Susan asked me to write about her illness and death. She said she had had a problem with truth all of her life –  I knew this was so, it clouded our friendship – and this was a time, to be honest, and say no more lies.

She said she trusted me to be honest about her life, and not sugar coat it, as happens when people die. She didn’t want to be seen as a hero or a tragedy. In some ways, she was both.

She wanted her death to be useful to others, and a warning to some to take care of themselves early on, before its too late. Susan’s kidneys and were failing even before her cancer was diagnosed.

I tried very hard to honor her request.

Susan was all too human – she was loving, funny, even joyous. She took beautiful photos and wrote lovely blog posts, but she never thought anything she did was any good.

As she turned 60, she upended her life to come upstate and start anew.

Her insecurity led her to plagiarize photos once or twice – she specifically asked me to write about this – even though her photos were so much better than the pictures she took from others.

It was painful watching Susan die bit by bit every day, but she looked so much better than the day we found her lying on her couch, she and her dog so alone and without food or comfort. At the end, she looked so peaceful.

Susan worked as a lab technician at Bennington Hospital; she loved the work and the people she worked with. For one of the first times in her life, she had a sense of community.

But it was Susan’s style to be liked and to be remote at the same time.

Nobody from work ever got into her house; she said she never went into the house of a co-worker. Nobody knew how sick she was; nobody was asked to help. As close as we have been, and as long as we have known one another, she never told me.

And that’s a shame because the people around her at work would have helped. So would I. So would a lot of people.

That was Susan’s pattern. She was jovial, funny, easy to talk to. But I think the only person who really knew her was her very loyal and loving friend Donna.  And even Donna had no idea how sick or desperate she was at the end.

When I asked her about this in the hospital, she just smiled and said, “you know me. I’m stubborn.”

Some of her friends at work were unhappy with my writing about Susan; they thought I was maligning her and that my posts were dismaying.  I explained that this is what I was asked to do and was proud to do, but it didn’t seem to matter.

They couldn’t accept what so many others have learned – there are always two Susans, one in plain sight, the other submerged, like an iceberg. She had suffered too much in her life to trust people.

I do understand how they feel; people expect sanitized eulogies.

That’s not me, that’s not Susan. She knew just what she was doing when she asked me to write about her death. I was honored to do it. We are all human. We are not one dimensional, all good or all bad. Every human I know, including me, is both.

But I know that this is America in 2020, though, and people who can’t handle being questioned need to stay offline and head for a monastery.

Maria and I both struggled with our friendship with Susan – too many lies, which she acknowledged. Her illness brought us all back together, and she and I picked up our relationship easily and comfortably, right where we left off. Maria talked it through with Susan; they worked it out as well.

And yes, Susan was entirely truthful and open in the last weeks of her life, as she wished to be. That makes her a hero to me.

Susan asked me to be a medical proxy and a Patient Advocate, a compliment I took seriously and was also honored by it. I had a lot of work to do.

The three of us – Steven, her brother, Donna, and me – worked with the hospital to make sure the rest of Susan’s life was comfortable and free of pain.

I don’t think Susan ever ultimately accepted the imminence of her death – she talked to the end about traveling and swimming and changing her lifestyle.

But she died a good death, especially under the circumstance. I  hope I helped.

We had a good laugh when this very earnest nutritionist came into the room and urged her to start eating more greens and fruit. A healthier lifestyle, she said.

Susan had just been told she would never leave her room alive, and she turned to me and said, “see, bro? I’m going to get healthier…” She was always eager to please.

I just looked at her speechless, Susan was no dummy, she got my look. “Oh,” she said, “maybe you can bring me a cider donut when you visit.” And she smiled her Susan smile.

I am happy Susan died so peacefully and without pain.

I’m going back to the hospital today to thank the doctors and nurses who cared for her so wonderfully and diligently.

The hospital took her in and saved her life once, then got her steady and comfortable, and helped her to die the way she wished to die.

It ended well, as good as it could have ended. In hospice, we call it a good death.

Susan heard from many people who loved her. She didn’t believe in wills or planning; she left quite a mess behind for her brother Steven to sort out. I will help him.

Steven and I became friends during Susan’s illness, we talked many times every day, and I much appreciate his honesty and warmth. He and Susan had been estranged, he hadn’t seen her in many years, and it was a shock to see her so changed and ill.

But they had a beautiful and loving reunion in the hospital.

He read my blog every day, and graciously thanked me for what I was writing.

Steven and I will stay in touch. I also have the greatest admiration for Susan’s friend Donna, who left an overwhelmingly busy and complicated life to come from New Jersey and say goodbye to her friend.

This meant the world to Susan. Donna saw her the morning she died. She is also helping re-home Sally, her long-suffering and devoted  Sheltie. (If you want to help, please contact Donna, she’s [email protected]).

For me, this was a lesson in humanity. A chance to step outside of myself. To be faithful to a friend, even a problematic friend. So many people came together in love and community to support Susan, to understand the complex world of human beings – we are all broken in some way.

The things that had divided us seemed to be much smaller and less significant than the things that connected us.

Susan had no hardness in her heart, something that made her very vulnerable and easy to wound. She told me she loved me very much and admired me as well. She said she was so sorry to have gummed up our friendship. And glad to have found it again.

There was no anger or judgment in her. In that way, and others, she was so much better than me.

Maria will write about her own experience with Susan; I will leave that to her.

They say you die the way you live, and I thought Susan taught us that this is not always so. She had a tough and difficult life; she suffered from obesity, abuse and addiction; she never lost her big heart in all that time, but she could never believe that she could trust others and open her life up to them.

I hope she learned better at the end.

I am reeling from this week; I’ll be frank, there are a lot of different and confusing emotions boiling around in me. I will sort it out, as I usually do, in the open and on my blog.

I thank you so much for reading about Susan and her death. Your messages sustained and comforted me. I’ll share the process as always. People say I need to rest, but what I need to do is write.

If that really was you contacting me last night by turning off my blog, well, thanks for the message. And goodbye to you, and happy journey. I hope the next round is easier for you.

See you later.