October toast

It was an evening in October. I was back in the country for another ten days for work. It was dark, cold outside. The dog was on the kitchen floor. He had already entered his last phase – sleeping, being petted, peeing and eating. Not that he ever was a playful frolicking dog, but now he was moving on, he knew the deal. Everyone else was gone.

Was Lex eating? I can’t remember. I think we were drinking tea. Or maybe I was cooking that vegetable thing, where you burn peppers to remove the skin and then fry them with tomatoes, courgettes and onions. I made it a couple of times, and she ate some of it. I don't think it stayed down.

Lex was drinking one of her treatments – a vile Chinese bitter brew. At one point she told me that she really didn’t want to drink it in the beginning, but the person responsible for that particular curative insisted. It was really hard to acquire, and therefore it had to be used. It was muddy brown, and bitter, harsh. Lex said that in the beginning it made her want to vomit. Then she got used to it. At some point she even said that it helped somewhat.

Like I said, it was October, our unwritten schedule had another seven months until graduation, and Lex was full of energy that evening. The energetic days came randomly and we had just gotten lucky – lucky that everyone was gone, and that she was up to sitting in the kitchen.

We were talking about shared memories. Not our usual conceptual stuff, this was all concrete – times together. “Remember the party in San Francisco? Your uncle got so drunk and you were really embarrassed.” “Yes, I guess I was”, “And then Jeff had brought Salvia, but you refused to do any”. “Yes, yes, I know”.

She told me stories about her courtship with the Professor, the early days in Russia, the less early days in Sweden. We were covering her life, luxuriating in the moment. Then she said: “Let’s have some vodka”. We poured a shot each, toasted and drank. It was a beautiful wake. I can never be sure of what she really thought, but I felt that I knew that she knew that I knew that we both knew that she was dying. Some times we actually manage to grasp the opportunities we are given. Isn't that amazing?