I didn’t want to know.
She didn’t want to talk about it.
But it was there with us. My friend of 20 odd years was tiny and wizened, her hands trembling slightly, and I noticed how the skin on them had changed, become more translucent.
“I was so mad at him,” she said, speaking of one of our less responsible and more scattered friends. “When I told him I had cancer he said ‘How could you do this to me?’”
And I nodded, because that was exactly what he would say, and it was a horrible thing to say to someone who was going to die. And it was horrible that he was going to lose her.