The Story of Joan

With illustrations by Edward Gorey

My friend Joan died today. She was with me, her ex-husband, and several friends. I have no special knowledge about what comes after death: what Hamlet called the “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” I can only hope that she is at peace and free from suffering.

I had flown out to Vermont three weeks ago to be with Joan during her final days and to be her caretaker. Fortunately I had help from others during this time. My goal was the same as it had been last year when I took care of her between her cancer surgeries: alleviate suffering. She had been in pain for the entire nine months since her cancer diagnosis, and was on serious pain medications. But for her, just sitting with her and holding her hand, or rubbing her feet or back, were as effective as the meds. This really drove home for me the incredible cruelty that the elderly and sick were subjected to during the Scamdemic, in not being allowed to be with their friends and loved ones.

I first met Joan in the summer of 2021, about six months after she had taken two doses of the Pfizer mRNA experimental injection. She seemed to be in very good health for someone in her late 60s. She was still riding her bike, though not as much as she had been in her 30s, when she was a pioneer in the new sport of mountain biking.

So one of the first things we did together was go on a bike ride, a hilly ten-mile loop in her neighborhood in rural Vermont. Joan was also an avid (and very fast!) kayaker, and together we explored several of the ponds near her house.

As I got to know Joan, I learned more about her history. One thing that alarmed me a little was her admission that in March 2020, something in her had broken, and she suddenly became afraid of being around other people, especially in crowds. This fear was so intense that in the fall of 2022, when we visited the fall harvest festival in her town, I had to lead her around by the hand as if she were blind. She almost completely stopped driving her car, and started depending on others to drive her places. She was terrified of getting Covid, and insisted on opening windows when visiting friends, even in the middle of winter. Several times I pointed out to her that March 2020 was the moment when the Scamdemic fear porn hit the world, but she insisted that she was immune to that because she didn’t have a TV. But she got all of her news from her iPhone, and surely picked up on other people’s terror.

Joan was a very sensitive soul, so much so that hurts and slights and losses that she’d experienced years or decades ago still felt fresh to her. As a child, she’d had some kind of cognitive disability, especially in language. She didn’t learn to speak English until her parents hired a speech tutor when she was eight. Teachers thought she was stupid.

Other children teased and ostracized her.

Fortunately she had kind parents who gave her the gifts of music and reading.

But the hurts she had received from cruel children and teachers stuck with her for the rest of her life.

Later in life she experienced other great losses. Her last partner Tim died of bone cancer, and Joan nursed him through the excruciating pain of the last six months of his life. When I met Joan, she hadn’t had another partner in the 17 years since Tim had died, and she still felt his loss as painfully as if it had happened a month ago.

Joan and I continued biking and kayaking together, but as time went on, she seemed to be going on a physical decline that was faster than I would have expected. She started having balance problems that caused her to stumble and fall frequently. One of these falls caused her to have back pain that persisted for weeks, and her final fall, in early 2024, caused her to break her wrist. Her unsteadiness finally forced her to give up bicycling, her great passion; she was too afraid of falling and hurting herself badly. Other signs of her physical decline included an inexplicable weight gain, despite her healthy, almost minimal diet and continued hard work in her garden.

Finally, two months after I moved back to California in May last year, Joan was diagnosed with bile duct cancer. Between her two cancer surgeries, I flew out to take care of her on two separate nine-day occasions. She was in severe pain and barely able to move both times. Finally, in October she had a ten-hour operation known as the “Whipple Procedure”, a last-ditch attempt to prolong her life. It seemed like this might be working, because after about a month she was up and walking a mile a day, and finally feeling on the mend.

But then she seemed to have a setback, with serious pain and weakness, and she never was well again. Her decline came very rapidly now, and in the last five months of her life, she lost a tremendous amount of weight. Towards the end, while I was with her, her body seemed to be shutting down, and her pain was excruciating and continuous.

At the end, she spoke many times of missing her mother (who had died many years before) and hoping to see her again. As I said, I have no insight into this possibility, but I hope that she was able to find the kind of happiness that eluded her in her life on this planet.