Nancy's Last Boy Friend

About the time John and I married, Nancy met Tom. They came to dinner as John was disposing of things in his condo in anticipation of moving with me to New Mexico. Nancy’s new boy friend was a tall, dignified man, wearing a dark gray suit matching his hair. He seemed rather quiet, but when he did speak, his manner was brisk, decisive, and intelligent.

On the wall behind the dining table was a large picture, a print of a painting by Pizzaro. Tom admired the Paris street scene, and John sold him the picture for $10. I thought it was too much to pay for such a cheap piece of junk art with a damaged frame, but John and Tom seemed happy with the deal, so I said nothing.

John’s apartment was an exact duplicate of Nancy’s, where I spent so many nights wishing I had one like it. The week after we married, John went out one day and came back with the deed to the apartment. As a wedding present, he put my name on the property as joint owner. We rented the apartment to someone else and moved to New Mexico.

Nancy and I remained friends. Each time John and I returned to the Chicago area to visit our grandchildren, we took Nancy to lunch. She came to visit us in New Mexico.

John and I were happy in the little house in Albuquerque. After John died, I sold the condo in Illinois and used the money to pay off the mortgage on the house in New Mexico. I had wasted a lot of time envying Nancy her condo. .

Each time I returned to Illinois to visit my daughter’s family, Nancy drove 30 miles from Darien to Naperville to have lunch with me. She took an antihistamine before she came, as she was highly allergic to Martha’s cats. The pills upset her stomach, but Nancy said, “I had to see you.”

Sitting across from me at a local restaurant, she talked about Tom. A physicist at Argonne Labs, he had money to take her to dinner at expensive restaurants and to the Lyric Theater and Chicago Symphony. She told me, “I arranged his calendar and introduced him to cultural things.”

Tom and Nancy had a close relationship for 20 years. He developed cancer; she took care of him, just as she took care of me in when I was homeless and crazy. She was hurt when his family would not permit her to see him when he was dying. I could see Nancy in hysterics at his bedside, and the family deciding to keep her away and let him go in peace.

Being Nancy, no one ever grieved as excessively as she did. Nancy’s life also seemed to collapse. Now in her mid-80's, her health deteriorated. For hours she hovered over her inhaler trying to breathe. She spent the last two years in a nursing home. Even in that dismal situation, she looked for ways to enjoy life. She told me it brightened her day when her daughter Sandy brought printouts of my blogs.

Sandy took the brunt of the ordeal as Nancy lapsed into dementia and paranoia. I can’t remember her that way. Nancy was a loyal and generous friend. She also was a woman who greeted all the changes in her life with enthusiastic optimism. From her I learned that no matter what happens, life will be fun.