The Last Goodbye

Journal Entry – November 17, 2002. I got the call not long after arriving at work. It was Brad—Connor’s best friend and former business partner. I hadn’t seen Connor since September. He had called a few times since then, in between rounds of treatments. His parents had even taken him to Switzerland for some new procedure.

The weekend in September turned out to be the last time I would see him. We spent the weekend talking and making love—staying in bed for two days.

“My leg hurts,” he said. “That’s not a good sign. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to see you again. But I don’t want to talk about that this weekend. I just want to spend every moment looking at you. Touching you. I want to see you happy. I want to spend the next two days making you happy. Will you let me do that?”

I had tears in my eyes. He reached for my face, pulled it to his, and kissed my forehead.

“No tears,” he whispered. “Right now, we’re here together. And I’m happy.”

We talked about the future—the life we weren’t going to have. And although we clung to the fantasy, the dread lingered in the background like a loaded gun on the table. There was no saving this bright thing. Only memories would remain—haunted by the precision and cruelty of loss.

The next morning, I watched him limp along my stone path between the rosemary and agapanthus. He turned, blew me a kiss, and waved. We both knew it was the last goodbye.

The door to my office clicked shut behind me with its usual solid thud. The brass latch locked with a familiar snap. My fingertips rubbed my forehead, and suddenly I felt sick.

When I last saw Connor I waved from my door. We didn’t acknowledge the dread. What difference would it have made to say the words out loud?

I sat down at my desk and tried to find something solid. Something real. The wood was cold and unmoving. The objects around me—Post-its, pens, old notes—were all still here, holding their shape. People don’t. People leave.

A song came into my head—music I clung to in moments like this, to keep the grief from swallowing me whole.

Peace came upon me
And it leaves me weak
So sleep, silent angel, go to sleep.

Then the phone rang. It was him.

“They’ve given me about a week,” he said. “I wanted to say goodbye. Please don’t come. I want you to remember me the way I was. I’m surrounded by family and I’m being taken care of. I want to die with your face in my mind. Smiling. Please don’t cry.”

The office felt suddenly cold. I took the elevator down in a daze. Outside, the sky was flat and gray. A gray mood for a gray day. The glory days were gone, and I had hit the bottom. A young, brilliant, generous man was being erased. The explanation? Chance. Biology. Acute Myeloid Leukemia. He was 32 years old.

I walked across the parking lot to the coffee shop in the strip mall. Last month it was crumbling. Now it was being redeveloped—slowly gutted and upgraded with LED signs and fake wood floors. The lively bars we used to haunt at happy hour would be sold off to chain restaurants. The old theater would be given stadium seats and beer taps. Everything would be new, improved, fake.

Death wears many faces. A town. A man. A future.

Inside, I ordered a black coffee and sat in the corner. I cried—quietly, without fuss. I traced the tear paths with my finger on the table. One man reached across, touched my hand, and asked if I was okay.

I lied. I said yes.

Connor’s death unraveled something inside me. It was the third blow in quick succession—a failed marriage, a soulmate who couldn’t defeat his demons, and now, a kind, young man felled by something neither of us could control.

Grief is greedy. But memory is sacred.

Yet, some people—no matter how brief their time—leave behind more love than most do in a lifetime.