Voicelessness and Emotional Survival--Therapy on the High Seas pg. 3

had a relatively high success rate with heart transplants, and he thought it would be helpful to live nearby just in case the opportunity arose. The downside, of course, was going to be ending the ocean voyage with me, but he figured we could have contact by telephone if need be. The one thing he asked was that if he did have a transplant that I be in the recovery room when he awoke from surgery. It was not that he wouldn't know where he was (he knew everyone had this experience) it was that he wouldn't know who he was until he saw me. This thought terrified him.

After he moved, we had occasional contact by phone, and when he twice came to Boston he stopped in to see me. By this time I had quit Mass. General and was working out of my home office. The first time he came in he gave me a hug and then moved his chair to within three or four feet of mine. He joked about this: I can hardly see you from there, he said, pointing to where the chair used to be. The second time he came in, I moved the chair closer for him, before he arrived. Each time I saw him he looked a little worse--pasty and weak. He was waiting for a transplant, but there was so much bureaucracy and such a long list of people in need. But he was still hopeful.

A couple months after I last saw H., I got a call from a friend of his. H. was in the hospital in a coma. A neighbor had found him on the floor of his apartment. A day later I received a call that H. had died.

Some of H.'s friends held a memorial service for him down in Florida. A long time friend sent me a sweet note and a photograph of H. at his best: skippering his sailboat. About a month later I received a call from one of H.'s brothers. The family was going to have a memorial service for H. at one of the local hospital chapels. Did I want to come?

At 10:45 I arrived at the hospital and strolled around the grounds for fifteen minutes thinking about H.. Then I went to the chapel. Oddly, when I arrived, a small group of people were filing out the door.

"Is this where the memorial service for H. is?" I asked one of the men who was leaving.

"It just ended."

"I don't understand," I said. "I was told it would be at 11:00."

"10:30" he said. "Are you Dr. Grossman?" he asked. "I'm Joel, H.'s brother. H. thought very highly of you."

I felt crazy. Could I have gotten the time wrong? I slipped the post-it out of my pocket on which I had written the time Joel had told me. "I'm sorry to have missed the service," I said, "But you told me 11:00."

"I don't understand how that could have happened," he said. "Would you like to join us for lunch?"

Suddenly, in my mind, I could picture H. laughing and drawing his chair so close that he could reach out and touch me. "See!" I heard him say. "Didn't I tell you?"