Editor’s Note: Traditional Disclaimer: This is a touching tribute to friendship from Marlow, who is a real live human being.

– Vic

Death Arrived on Time

Death arrived on time this past Tuesday morning. It was easier than we thought it would have been. Ned had been suffering from congestive heart failure for several years; and, it had spiraled out of control recently. He was deeply sedated when he passed.

I met him more than twenty years ago, when he was about my current age. He was a brilliant patent attorney who had run-and-gunned with the titans of American manufacturing. He counted the Reynolds Aluminum brothers amongst his close personal friends. The Ned I knew was a regular guy, possessed of a sneaky quick wit, a taste for good wine and do-anything-love for his two talented children.

He was never drunk on New Year’s eve nor overly satisfied at Christmas. We would loaf together on Labor Day and clown with friends when they were patients in hospitals. He was nervous at the birth of his grandchildren. They and his wife Jacquie made his later years good.

We spent countless evenings talking about our kids, jobs and past lives while sitting on my Lee Street front porch steps, in his Old Town backyard rose garden on lawn chairs under a 150-year-old oak tree, and at wine bars and restaurant tables in Washington DC, New York and Paris.

We inhaled life’s perfume deeply as if its flowers were everblooms.

We departed the Alexandria shores of the Potomac River years ago — I to my southernmost island, he to a coastal town in Maine. We kept in touch. We visited each other several times when the weather was seasonally perfect at the others pad.

I can see him now after a few days in that Maine hospital bed, being fed and aired by his caring nurses and a high tech ventilator . . . there he was sitting propped up in his bed . . . almost blind, eyelids resting closed but his eyes hungrily searching the darkness to see the mercy of death with his children and grandchildren at his bedside.

“Isn’t it a lovely day, Mr. Martin?” the day nurse said when she saw him after Tuesday morning’s shift turnover.

“Oh, yeah . . . ” he tried to say.

Offshore through his room window, you could see the sails of a passing yacht with a champagne breakfast party on deck, lots of girls, laughter and the rest.

“It’s the first sunlight we’ve had in three days, Mr. Martin. Spring is finally coming. I can feel it.” observed his nurse.

Ned’s face flushed a rosy pink and he smiled a small smile as he thought “I can feel the warm light coming.”

The nurse came in and turned off the flashing monitor.

Rest in peace, my friend.

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