A Call from a Dying Friend

I got a call yesterday from an old friend.  

He told me he is dying and only has a year or so more.  There is nothing the doctors can do.  

He asked me to send him a book he and I both loved when we were kids growing up. 

He knows I still have it. It’s Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  It’s a science fiction/fantasy novel about a man who “dies” here on earth and is reborn on Mars.

My copy of the book is old, maybe 60 years old. He touched it and I touched it.  Reading it as kids we turned its pages, wondered at its magic.  I wrote some notes in it.  He did too. I wonder what he’ll think when he sees those notes.

It's odd.  I've lost 5 of my good friends from childhood already.  They all went the same way, in silence, with no one near, only wives and lovers.  I wonder if this is the way it is.  Finally, the only bonds are the truest ones.