Much Ado about Much

I was totally devastated when my best friend told me they have Alzheimer's.  I felt and was as helpless as when we learned that my first wife had a malignant tumor in her left breast.  When we learned that my Dad had surgery to remove a huge malignant tumor in his thorax, I went into a nearly year long period of numb denial, and when my Mom began to show symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, we could not deny that because every day she was going away from us to that world of no memory, few feelings, extreme depression.

I spoke to my friend yesterday.  We talked about books we were reading, and the difficulties of reading heavy, hard bound books in bed when you fell asleep and dropped the book on your face.  Heavy Reading took on a whole new significance, and black eyes became marks of erudition.  No more "oh, I walked into a door", or "I accidentally bumped into my wife's knee".  Now one could legitimately claim that I dropped a book on my face, and the fellow conversant would know it was the truth and once again you were trying to read yourself to sleep rather than knock yourself unconscious with some great book.

When I mentioned this problem to a friend who loved to read, he had a ready solution, and suggested that I tear out 20 or so pages of a heavy book and discard them after I read them.  My love and respect for books is so strong that I am having trouble starting that course but I DO really want to read Churchill's six volume set about the second World War, so I'll probably do it.

But as always, I digress.  The FaceTime conversation with my friend ended when the battery on their iPhone gave warnings of dissipation, and we ended our conversation at what felt like an appropriate time.  We resolved nothing, but we managed to ease my pain tremendously.  I hope I did the same in some small way for my friend.  My heart is not lighter, but it no longer feels like it is being compressed in a pressure chamber.  For the sixty years we have been good friends, my pal has eased my pain more than often, and I always said that they knew me better than I knew myself.

Is this what life is?  Are these '' Golden Years" or at best, mildly tarnished Brass.