"Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln..."

I fear that this blog lately is becoming the obituary column.

But I just found out today that someone that I knew for very long time passed away back in October. Her name was Marilyn, and she was my massage therapist for almost fifteen years before she developed ovarian cancer and had to stop her practice. When someone has their hands on you for that long, you can't help but grow close, and very often we'd wind up gabbing all the way through our session and for while afterward, in her sunny, cheerful, but wonderfully humanly messy kitchen.

And these humanly messy qualities were among the things that were so wonderful about her. She loved to laugh and dance and cook and have fun, and as she was Cajun, she had spent her vacations in New Orleans visiting relatives where she probably laughed and danced.

Her love for life was dimmed only briefly by her chemotherapy and radiation, and after the surgery and first round, she gained enough strength to see some of her clients, usually only one per day. And when I hurt my back and couldn't come to her, she offered to come to me. That never worked out though, as each day that our appointment came turned out to be a bad day for her and she eventually told me that I should look for someone else, "so I won't keep pissing you off."

It was a struggle to find someone to replace her. I knew I could never replace "her," but after a period of trial and error (mostly error...I mean, how do you replace a professional who knows what's wrong with your body just by watching you come through the door?) , I did find a new massage therapist, in fact, I often gravitate among two or three of them depending on what I need. And even after I stopped seeing her professionally, we got together once a month or so for lunch, and she always offer me an ear - when she had the strength to listen - during that awful period of my life when everything seem to be hitting me at once.

I don't remember the last time I saw her. Probably it was at one of those lunches, at the Joyous Cafe on Broadway, where we'd compare aches and pains and she told me what this or that massage therapist should be doing for me, and things I could do myself, and we'd laugh, and laugh.

That's what I'll remember most. Hands as well as a heart that always seemed to know what I needed. And this - at one of those lunches, after she updated me on the status of her blood count and the new chemo she was about to try, she floated this idea at me. "Do you think it would be too weird to throw myself a funeral?"

I thought a moment. I don't believe anyone in the whole of my life had ever asked me such a question.

"I mean," she said, "People say all the good stuff about you after you die. I want to be around to hear it."

I believe I said that I thought it would be a great thing to do.

And, sure enough, a month or so later I got an invitation in the mail. Husband thought it was horrifically morbid, and refused to go. But I still liked the idea. And admired her for doing it. I even RSVP'd.

But come the night of the service, I chickened out. I got dressed, I put on my jacket, and then just started to cry. And cry, and cry, and cry.

She forgave me for not coming. "Not everyone can handle it," she said, and just continued our conversation.

And even though she told me about, oh, eight or so months ago that she might be too tired to talk, it would be OK if I left messages or sent emails. Every time I thought of her I'd call and leave a message, or if I found a card I thought she'd find funny I sent it.

It's a kind of disembodying experience to find out that someone you thought so close to you had died five months after the fact. And in the most random of ways. I happened to pick up an oncology group newsletter while I was waiting to have my yearly mammogram, and there was a box headed "In Loving Memory" with her name listed below. But I can hardly blame her husband. Having just been through the same experience, I know that he probably had enough to handle without having to call all of her ex-customers.

I just hope that she went out of this life the way she lived it: brave, laughing, and definitely out loud.