Two sides of the coin in 2025

 This year, the ups and downs of life hit very close to home.  On one side, we had some wonderful experiences with family, especially with the grandchildren, one as a newly minted teenager and the young one at nine years of age.  In May, we traveled with them to visit several National Parks in Arizona, Utah, and California.  It was wonderful to experience the parks with them.  Then, from September to November, B and I traveled to 10 countries on my first round-the-world trip.  The travel with the boys was planned to the last minute as I did not want to leave anything to chance, but the second one was completely haphazard, just the way I like them.  Left home on a one-way ticket to Tokyo, Japan, and from there on it was up to us where and for how long we would travel.  One highlight for me was studying how cultures make sense of the unknown and what happens after death.

And as we were enjoying ourselves, friends back home were taking their last few breaths and facing the big unknown of life on Earth.

The first was Joyce Boucheron.  After a year and a half since I hadn’t seen Joyce, I finally picked up the phone last summer to give Joyce a call.  We had been co-workers at Glaxo for maybe 15 years, 8 of which we worked side-by-side on diabetes projects.  After Glaxo, we would visit with Joyce and Bill in Durham at least once per year.  In the phone call, Joyce announced that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few months before.  We both knew what that meant, but focused on the fact that she had been asymptomatic and doing relatively well, all things considered.  A few weeks after the phone call, we visited Durham to see Paul Feldman, a friend and former colleague of B, who had been diagnosed with A.L.S. just a few weeks earlier.   Paul didn’t look good.  He was already having a hard time breathing, and I told B that I thought this might be the last time we saw him alive.  Sadly, I was right.  That week, I also called Joyce a little hesitant, but was surprised to hear that she was happy to hear from me and willing to meet for lunch.  Bill, Joyce, and I had a wonderful lunch in Guglhupf on 15-501.  Her hair was regrowing after chemo sessions, and she seemed fine.  Much better than I expected to see a Stage-4 pancreatic cancer patient.  We said our goodbyes and promised to come back to Durham to see her again soon.  I texted Joyce before our trip to Japan, and she answered and wished me a fun trip.  The next text I received was from Bill, just a few weeks later.  Joyce had passed away.  Apparently, she had taken a bad turn and died a few weeks later.

My other big loss was Rafael Leonard.  Rafa was a childhood friend who completed the trio of Nando, Rafa, and me.  The three of us were inseparable in High School in Costa Rica, and as adults, we communicated and visited as often as possible.  Rafael built a successful backup power-supply company in Panama serving the international airport and many international and local banks.  After the passing of Nando in November 2007, Rafa and I had made a point of visiting each other either in Miami or in Panama.  The last time in Panama was in February 2023, when our visit was cut short by the death of B’s brother, Isaac, and we had to fly to Puerto Rico for that.  At that time, we shared COVID-19 stories and an incident that Rafa went through with an electrified fence which put him in Code Blue for about 10 minutes before coming back to life.  The last text that we exchanged was in May of this year when he told me about another heart procedure and problems with his pacemaker.  We concluded with promises of taking the grandchildren to Panama soon.  My texts before and during the long trip went unanswered.   Later, I found out from Berta his wife, that he had been in the hospital for more than two months intubated under the effects of COVID.   B and I returned home after two months traveling on the 14^th of November and on the 15^th, Raul, Rafa’s younger son, called me with the sad news that he had passed away the day before.  I didn’t suspect anything at all.  Checking my messages later I realized that Berta had been trying to keep me informed at several times during the two months but those WhatsApp messages had gone directly to archive so I never saw them during the trip.  There is little anyone could have done during his last months alive as patients with COVID are typically isolated and removed from loved ones and society in general.  So closing this year with mixed feelings and understanding that our days on this Earth are counted and brief.

Even after learning about all the ways the people of this world explain and handle death, nothing is clear.  I hope Rafa is now meeting Nando and recounting their life stories, but we will never know.  Rest in Peace my friends.