Searching for Yoldash

When we met our old friend for the last time, we shook hands. We did not talk about his cancer, or about his stopping treatment. We talked instead about my father, who had visited him earlier in the day. My father, with his failing memory and pondering, almost dreamlike awareness, had returned from the visit and whispered to us secretively: He’s really aged! These two friends at the end of their lives worried mostly about each other.

For our own visit later in the afternoon, we stayed 15, maybe 20 minutes. We talked of other things, in part because there was too much to say, but mostly because what we really needed to say had already been expressed in a last, simple handshake.