Idols

I just got off the phone from a conversation with my friend, Joyce. I want to share the wonder of Joyce with you.

Joyce, who lives alone on Cape Cod, is eighty-two. She's a seamstress and a local socialite. She takes town meetings seriously and never passes up a chance to meet someone new. She has been a rare grandmother who sadly survived the death of her own beautiful grandson over a decade ago.

I first met Joyce in 1986. I had moved to Provincetown that Fall. I was in transition in my life. I commuted back and forth to Boston for two days a week for work on a Honda CB650 motorcycle, but I lived in a tiny one-room cottage in Joyce's garden.

Joyce, who is somewhat diminutive, looked up at me on the day we met, after I had dismounted my motorcycle in her driveway. I saw deep perceptiveness in her blue eyes. I had answered an ad in the newspaper for her rental cottage. She showed me the cottage. She said I could have it. I moved in the following week.

By the following year, I was living in New York, where I moved to work in AIDS hospice care. But, Joyce, who had lived for decades in Manhattan in the prime of her life, stayed in my thoughts. We had become friends quickly.

Over the following 8 years, I visited Joyce regularly. She was kind enough to put me up at times. I sometimes house-sat for her while she was off on her world travels. Traveling is her passion. I was lucky enough to be part of her life. I got to know her two daughters. I watched her grandson, who was born with a serious birth defect, grow up in a loving and nurturing family. I stood by in grief when he died. There have been few times in my life that equal simple suppers at Joyce's kitchen table. She and I can talk for hours.

In 1995, I was told I could die in 6 months. And indeed, after 6 months I could not maintain my life in my city house. I was crippled with shortness of breath and exhaustion. The stress of being in the city and the knowledge that I was deteriorating was a daily torture. None of my friends or family seemed forthcoming and willing to see me through the worst of it, which seemed to be fast approaching.

One evening, I was speaking with Joyce on the phone. She was obviously disturbed by how I sounded. Eventually, she said, "Well, my cottage, your old cottage, is vacant. Why don't you sell your house and come here and live in my garden?" I wept immediately. A great weight was lifted from my chest. I said, "But, Joyce, I'm dying. I wouldn't want to..." Joyce interrupted me, "I know. I know what I'm doing. You put that house on the market. I'll be up next week and help you bring what you want down here." And she came and she did.

I did very nearly die that year in Provincetown. I woke one morning at 3 AM unable to breathe. Weeks followed in hospitals. Months of IV treatments followed that. I needed a walker to cross the eight feet of living room to the bathroom in my little cottage. But, I endured and survived. Despite my disgust at the profiteering of the pharmaceutical industry, it has saved my life more than once.

Through it all, Joyce brought me soup, sat with me at supper time, called me on the phone several times a day. She was the best of human beings to me. When I decided to move back to Boston eventually to be closer to the medical care I would need, Joyce never flinched in her friendship and openness. We have remained solid friends and have never had an angry argument.

Joyce is my American Idol. She is the model of what I consider a humanist to be. She would dismiss this as foolishness, which, of course, would only strengthen my opinion of her. Joyce is the rare human being whose vision of her own way through the world is always crisp and resilient. Despite her many challenges, she opens her eyes and her heart to each new day with the same energy and curiosity. This is true strength. This is what I aspire to become in my own daily practice as a humanist and a human being.