8 Middle Adulthood 219Four of his photographs are sitting on a table in my living room. Two are
of Venice; one is of a plein air painter standing next to a river; and the fourth is
a city street in Paris where a large Hertz van is parked between two tiny Deux
Chevueaux. My cousin’s hobby was photography and he was good at it.
He printed these photos for me because I saw them in his house and com-
plimented him. He brought the prints when he and his wife visited a few years
ago. I thanked him and, after they left, stuck them in a drawer.
The day after his funeral, I took them out. Now, I don’t know what to do
with them. I can’t find a place for them on a wall. But, I can’t bear to bury them
away in a drawer.
* * *Our fathers were brothers, so for over 20 years, until I married, we shared
the same last name. But we shared much more than that. As kids, we lived in
adjacent apartment buildings in a neighborhood in southeast Washington, DC
across from the Anacostia River. I was only 4 months older and a Tomboy so it
was probably natural that we would be friends. We played together; walked to
school together; learned about sports together; went on vacations together; and
got in trouble together. At age 8 or 9 we even went to the bathroom together
until our parents forbade it.
As kids we looked so much alike, people frequently thought we were
brother and sister instead of cousins. We both had dark brown hair, bushy eye-
brows, and until our teens, were virtually the same height. With our dark olive
complexions, in summer, we both turned the same shade of warm cognac.
And then we lost touch. Why was that? We became teenagers; went to
school; married; got jobs; had kids. We had our own lives. Maybe that’s expla-
nation enough.
In the past few years, we began to see more of each other at family gath-
erings: his mother’s 80th birthday, his daughter’s wedding, his stepfather’s
funeral. There was even an event where we celebrated the successful removal
of his cancerous kidney. He had such a wicked sense of humor, it didn’t sur-
prise me when, he called himself “uni-kidney.”
For me, the beginning of the end was an e-mail I sent wishing him a
belated happy birthday. It was May 2013 and he had just turned 68. Instead of
e-mailing back, he phoned. That alone told me something was wrong.
Was it my imagination or did he sound just like my own father, his uncle,
when he said: “I won’t make it to 70; I have incurable abdominal cancer.” Then,
of course, came the details: the symptoms, the doctors’ theories, the dead ends,
the false hopes, the second, third, and fourth opinions. I asked all the standard
questions: was he satisfied with his doctors; was there really nothing anyone
could do; was he in pain? All things that seemed important then and now
don’t matter in the least.
A month later, he called again. If I wanted “to say goodbye,” he said, I’d
“better come soon.” Of course, I had to go, but I was terrified. I’d never said
goodbye to anyone dying before, never had the chance, all my “important”
people having died suddenly. But what was I so afraid of? Was I feeling “per-
formance” anxiety, as though I had a role in a play that had no script? Was my