It was only a dream...

I learned today that M has been diagnosed with ALS.

I am so angry that I could scream.

When my friend E died in October, it hurt on a level I'd never experienced. Sitting in the ICU, holding his wife's hand, and watching the nurses with hushed voices go about their business, there was a sense of desolation. Eighteen months of fighting leukemia seemed deserving of a more dignified end. Knowing that his family and friends had been with him every step of the way was small consolation, I thought at the time. The unfairness of death seemed to outweigh everything else. We had done everything we could, and it still was not enough.

But I took care of things. I made the phone calls that his wife could not make. I made funeral arrangements, and I made food. I picked relatives up at the airport, and I helped clean up his things. I stayed busy. I was useful. I fought the sense of helplessness by doing something - anything - to make things easier. I was okay because I was making a difference, no matter how small it was.

Now this.

I instantly realized that M's situation will be dramatically different. ALS has no cure, so the only hope is to slow its progress. I don't know how long it will take. I don't know how it will end; he may choose to end it himself before the disease becomes unbearable. I don't know what he's thinking, and I don't know how he will manage.

What I do know is that he will do as much of this alone as possible. He will not let me help, and he will not rely on family or friends except when absolutely necessary. He believes that accepting support is a weakness, and that asking for help is unforgivable. He will insist on preserving what he sees as his own dignity.

This is his prerogative, of course. But I hate it.

I hate it so much that I could throw up just thinking about it.

I know that we never could have made our relationship work forever. I realize that despite how much we've always cared for each other, our differences were too great to allow any permanence. I made peace with that long ago, and I won't kid either of us by pretending otherwise.

But it hurts desperately. I now realize how fortunate E was to have the people he loved at his side through everything, and how important it was to not have to fight alone. I see his family take solace in the fact that they did everything they could for him, and find some semblance of peace in the connection they felt with him as the end neared. I see the difference it made.

M will never allow himself to rely on me. He will begrudgingly accept some level of help from his sons, but most of the basic needs, I expect, will be met by strangers. Financial compensation is much easier to dole out than thanks, no?

I grieve already. I am horrified by the thought of him slowly dying alone. I can't comprehend the level of misery he will experience, or how it will be compounded by his stubborn refusal to let people love him. It screams of wrongness, and it rages at my sensibilities.

Maybe it makes me so angry because I know that I am so much like him, if on a much more subdued scale. Or because there are so few people in my life that I would be willing to ask for help if I desperately needed it, and I can't bear to lose one of them. Or because there are so many opportunities that have been lost.

I will say, though, that the saddest part of all is that I don't think the ALS will kill him. I think his pride will take him first.

And that is something I can not reconcile.