Five Things I learned about Dying From Abby Tan

Thirty years ago friends were dying of AIDS. Those were traumatic times; we were young and suddenly thrust into caring, grieving and burying too many friends in a short space of time. We were emotionally ill-equipped to handle death because we figured that was for old people.

Now I’m old and death comes to take friends and loved ones at random and in increasing numbers. I think much more about death, about responding to it and how I too will face it one day.

Recently, my friend Abby Tan after four years of battling cancer died with dignity and courage. I was with her through much of that time and I got a first-hand lesson in understanding dying.

When I was with Abby, I often listened to my conversations with her, weighing its authenticity and honesty. I checked my bedside manners taking cues from doctors, nurses, friends, and what my feelings were telling me. We have watched too many dying scenes on the big screen and I wanted to ascertain my reactions were genuine and not celluloid.

I scrutinized my behavior from pleasantries (“How are you…?”) to affectations, deleting those actions that seemed mundane. I didn’t want to be a clod to a friend who woke up each day knowing the limits of her life.

Thoreau once remarked after seeing autumn leaves falling , “I watch these brilliant colored leaves for they teach me how to die gracefully.”

I wanted to learn how to be of solace to a dying friend. But more importantly, when my time is up, I want to replicate the grace, spunk, and love Abby demonstrated till the end. Here’s what I learned.

1. Smile. Abby treated her Cancer as a wily opponent. She researched and went for promising treatments, hopeful with each one, and always bearing a smile. When a treatment failed, she’d try another, undaunted, still bearing a smile.

One could only smile back at Abby. Sometimes I thought I was looking flippant smiling even when cancer cell counts were increasing and things were looking hopeless. I wanted to cry proving to Abby how I felt her pain. But that was disingenuous. I was not in pain, she was.

At her bedside hours before she died, I’d still give a pixie sort of smile whenever she looked my way. At one point, she smiled back. It was a genuine smile, a grateful smile, a smile that you give just as you’re leaving a house or driving away. With that smile, I felt the cord that had attached itself these years between her and me, loosened, sliding softly and smoothly.

2. Drop everything and be there. We lead busy hectic lives. And we make the commensurate excuses. Being older, I’ve decided that’s not the way to go. Abby’s call for help was the test.

Being there for a friend dying is not amorphous like trying to end world hunger. It is crystal clear, sharper, a test of one’s resolve.

I did whatever was asked of me by Abby. Sometimes I faltered and even resented the time and effort I had to put in. But the requisites of truly caring checked me.

I can sometimes cop out from an important meeting with some excuse or other. Not with a dying friend. Either you help or disappoint. Either you love or only so much.

Be there for your dying friend. You’d like that when it’s your turn.

3. Listen. Listen to a dying friend. Ever wondered why public places, restaurants and taxis have their music on full blast? My theory is that we don’t like quiet. We don’t want to hear our thoughts, or even that of friends. We don’t want reflection and solitude.

We engage in chatter on any and all subjects to avoid the queasiness of pauses and silence. Silence feels like death.

With Abby there were long, long pauses in the conversation. There was an economy of words and nothing was extraneous. When she spoke, unfettered with chit-chat, it was to recall her life, moving from Singapore at a young age to live and adopt our country as her own. She’d recall happy times and trips abroad and she’d flash a grin. She would also describe her latest Cancer treatment, its benefits and failures. I learned to listen, really listen because what she said will later be faithfully recalled among friends.

When your friend speaks, be there, at the ready, to listen.

4. Hold your friend. Abby and I didn’t engage much in physical displays of affection. Pecking cheeks and friendly pats were as far as it went. One day, alone with her, she made the announcement, “John, I will no longer go through Chemo. I have matters to settle with my lawyers and when that’s done, I’m ready to go to hospital and die.” I was across the table and I saw she had uttered a realization and a tear fell.

I wasn’t sure what to do but knew it was no time for Good Manners and Right Conduct. I walked over to her side, embraced her, held her hand and cried softly with her as we looked out into her garden and to a sad grey sky. She squeezed my hand slightly and we held one another for a long while until I felt I gave her the strength she needed. With her soft warm hands, she too assured me of her resignation with life.

From then on until she passed away, I would hold her hand or stroke her arm when no one was looking. I didn’t want to feel I was doing so for the benefit of others or some phantom movie camera.

Holding, embracing, caressing and stroking are the proprietary acts of the living. Somethings we all would like to feel till the end.

5. No baby talk for the dying. With babies I shift to goo-goo phrases and sing/song chatter and teasing remarks. I do something similar with the dying. My sentences are truncated and revolving around their condition. I constantly offer assistance and second-guess their maladies. I try to play substitute nurse.

Abby, like many in her condition have had much time to ponder and face life-and-death issues. After that, they want to go on with the daily act of living.

Abby fulfilled her bucket list of visiting Turkey. She would eat despite the lack of appetite. She played golf and was diving just months before.

When visiting Abby in the morning just a week before she passed away, she was still downstairs at her dining room table reading one of three newspapers. She would discuss the news or recount her career as a journalist, the best of the stories she filed and saw print. She would critique what I wrote. For so long as she could stand the pain, she wanted to move, to experience, to have a conversation, the basic elements of affirming life.

It was only three days before her death that finality set in. She decided it was over and wanted to go to hospital. The planned Antartica trip was canceled.

She had weakened so, grimacing in pain, and could no longer walk down the stairs. She was laid on a stretcher and carried to an ambulance. She didn’t open her eyes to see her garden. The newspapers had neatly piled up on the table, unopened.

At the hospital she refused to eat any further.

In the last hours of her life the morphine substitute drip she was on eased the pain but made conversation difficult. A smile, a touch, and just being there was now the balm for me. This was the moment to be brief in words as I strained to decipher her occasional whispers. I didn’t want to tell her to “rest” or “let go.”

I simply said “Abby, I love you.” Perhaps that’s what I’d like to hear when I go too.