She looks tired as she climbs the stairs.  She tells me she is leaving on a trip Saturday morning.

       I invite her for a cup of tea.  Her eyes glance around at the mess.

        "I'm cleaning for the book study group tonight," I explain.

       "Oh, then I better go and let you finish."  She knows that people will begin arriving at 7 p.m.

       "Nonesense, have some tea," I assure her, "I do what I can, and when I run out of time, I set up the chairs."

       "I always had the chairs ready by 1 p.m. when a book study was at our house," she says wistfully.

       I turn on the teakettle and get my special china tea cups, the ones that Betty and Judy bought me, the ones with the gold edging.  The cup with pink flowers I give to Bess, and I sit the delicate one with blue flowers in front of my chair (as I push aside the clutter on the table).

       We sit and talk a long while.  She tells me she is going to Mexico for some special medical treatment.  She has been battling cancer for a long while.  She looks thin and frail.

       A child-like voice blurts out, "Bess, are you going to die?"

       Bess answers directly, "The doctors say there is nothing else they can do, but I don't believe it.  I don't intend to give up without a fight.  I'm not going to die.  A few years ago I'd have not believed in alternative therapies but now . . .  If I get through this, I'm going to give something back to all the people who've helped me."

       We talk a little more about her search for alternative therapies and then I apologize for being so blunt,

       "I wanted to know for sure, because I didn't want you dying on me, when I didn't even know you were that sick." 

       I don't believe she is really dying.  I am confident she'll recover from this illness just like she'd recovered from the Epstein Barr syndrome that she had a few years ago.  But . . . just in case,

       "I have some things I need to say then."

       I pour out my heart to her, how much love I feel for her, how much she's helped me over the years, how invaluable she was the summer before I ended up in the hospital.  I thank her for believing in me, encouraging me, praising me, and being there for me.  The tears well up in my eyes and I give her a big hug.  Bess is the one who taught me how to hug.

       By this time it is six o'clock and she slowly rises to go home.  It takes her last bit of energy to walk down the stairs and get into her car.  I loan her a book I've read so she can read it on the plane.  I give her one more hug.  I watch until the last trace of her car disappears.

       Bess and her husband take off to Mexico and she has the treatments.  The results look promising.