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- Apr 11, 2012
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Last week I found out that one of my oldest friends doesn't have long to live. I spoke with him yesterday for a few minutes, but since it's affected his lungs, it seemed like he was struggling to talk and I didn't want to keep him on the phone. But when we were hanging up he said, "Keep in touch." Our mutual friends are also urging me to stay in touch with him, and of course I'm more than willing to, but (a) it seems like it's difficult for him, and (b) I'm having trouble keeping the conversation "up". The reason is he knows he's dying. He knows I know he's dying, and so it just seems frivolous and a bit insulting for me to be talking about things we did when we were younger, the sports teams we were on together (this guy was a great all-around athlete, but naturally, his best sport was baseball--he was a starting pitcher for a major US college), or any of our other antics. We even lived together for a short time when we were just out of college.
So I'm just wondering if any of you have ever been in a situation like this, and how you handled it. Not the least of the difficulties is I am truly brokenhearted about this--can hardly get him out of my mind--but I think the last thing I want to do is show that to him.
So I'm just wondering if any of you have ever been in a situation like this, and how you handled it. Not the least of the difficulties is I am truly brokenhearted about this--can hardly get him out of my mind--but I think the last thing I want to do is show that to him.
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