Death comes with the first frost

Our friend Tom was a jock and a vegetarian. He looked and acted the embodiment of good health, so it was a shock when he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer this year. He underwent endless chemo and then stem cell therapy and about eight weeks ago he was pronounced cancer free. He went back to biking, took out his boat, went back to work as a high end house painter with a crew. He seemed very happy to be cured, to be alive. We were at a friend Lilli’s house [who lost her husband to a probably botched heart surgery two years ago] when he suddenly could not speak. I decided he was having a stroke – my mother and brother died of stroke and I know more about it than most people – but no one believed me. We offered to take him to Cape Cod Hospital but nobody else thought it necessary. By the time he got home, he was much worse and his wife drove him to the hospital in Hyannis where he was indeed diagnosed with stroke. He was moved to Beth Israel in Boston where his cancer team is located. The cancer had moved into his brain. They said they could try to maintain him but that there was no cure. Ten days later he died in the hospital. He was younger than Woody, much younger than me and had always appeared strong. Cancer seems able to take any of us at any time. We’re all still shocked. We are all – his friends and family – mourning. We are still a bit in disbelief. I wrote a couple of poems this week but mostly I’m trying to catch up on many many chores I have been neglecting and also breaking in my new assistant. The drought finally was interrupted by a couple of inches of rain this week. We are used to an island climate here, the edge taken off heat, cold, any extremes of weather than may attack the mainland. But now we are getting extremes. A horrible winter with snow just about every day. A scorching summer and extremely hot dry early fall. We don’t seem to get the gentle rains we were accustomed to but instead either drought or torrential downpours. Climate change. Where do these deniers live anyhow? We had our first frost, so all the tender plants are gone. We were just getting cucumbers and now no more. The peppers are gone too. The basil dropped dead. I managed to pot some rosemarys and some ornamentals and bring in the houseplants – bay trees, scented geranium, begonias, tuberous and leafy, colocassia, Christmas cactus – in time to save them, but I’d intended to pot a few more. But the sugar maples are brilliant, It’s a gorgeous time of year here. We don’t have to go farther than out the door for leaf peeping. We put up the bird feeders early in the month providing the cats, especially the two youngest Willow and Xena, with endless amusement. I just finished the newest in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Saga, The Empty Throne. I am reading my way through Jewish Noir, an anthology edited by Kenneth Wishnia in which I have a story I wrote for him. I’ve been enjoying most of the stories, which is the highest praise for any anthology. PM Press brought it out.