Morning has broken — Hasta pronto, Rolando

In my greenhouse at daybreak, I began the kinds of contemplations that rise from hands in soil, and my thoughts turned to my friend Rolando Smith who died last fall after an illness that ravaged him so quickly that our heads and our hearts have lurched for the last half year with every incomprehensible escalation.

I remembered how much I loved being in my backyard with Rolando, how he always commented on the rich fragrance of plant life concentrated in one place. I felt the first sharp twinges of missing him here, and as I will at the ranch, on the other side of the table from me, and on our little road trips north and south.

The surreal events of the last few days are fresh and largely yet unprocessed. So recently is he gone from us that thoughts of him soak into my every sensibility.

This morning signaled not only a preview of life without him in it, but also how he celebrated his life with us with laughter and gratitude.

That he celebrated life at all is a miracle, an emotional Everest-ian triumph that eclipsed a childhood no child deserved. The good man he became was self-made, self-educated from adolescence through university, loving, and generous.

That he would share his life with us was a gift.

I’ve known him for decades, but he became a dear and vital part of my life just after I was diagnosed with cancer in December of 2014, navigating with me through the most frightening parts of the disease and the residual aftermath of chemotherapy. He drove me wherever I needed to go and made certain I had healthy doses of hilarity to counter my fear of what was unknown.

He was part of my team, someone well acquainted with the chemo drill as he had cared for his mother in her fight with the disease.

He was the charming dinner partner we all enjoyed, a teller of tales longer than Lent, a self-deprecating chronicler of life in Laredo. He was an audiophile, an encyclopedia of the most obscure details of the lives and times of musicians, especially the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Neil Young, Cat Stevens, and the voices of the sixties and seventies that shaped the collective conscience of Baby Boomers. He loved Patti Smith and especially her books, Just Kids and The M Train.

Rolando was hands on with screwdrivers, saws, and wrenches, a step ahead of a Honey Do call. When the chemo compromised my hands, feet, and balance, he was there to unload dog food, grocery bags, and sacks of chicken scratch. Oh, but to hear him say once more, “I’m right on top of it, Rose!”

As he had buoyed up one or another of us in this ragtag circle of his friends, we were there, too, to sort through the next phase of dealing with his illness. Some of us were known to one another, and some of us were meeting for the first time. What we had in common was how much we loved him. Some, like Karen, whom Roland had entrusted to make his medical decisions if he was not able, did the heavy lifting, and the rest of us did what we could.

Looking back, I can see now that as I was being told that I had bought myself a few years of remission, Rolando was already ill with a cancer that would devour him with alacrity.

It didn’t seem that way, however, as it was first happening. From his hospital bed he still regaled us with stories, so there was laughter and hope, so much collective hope that perhaps we fooled ourselves a bit about the weight loss and his discomfort.

Even after I resigned myself to what would be the inevitable conclusion to his life, I wished for Rolando a reprieve from pain and for a few months of normalcy, a contemplative time for him to tie up loose ends and find peace where it had eluded him. I wished for him to have time to figure out the last mysteries of his earthly tenure and to leave this life in the care of his best friend Manuel and his devoted partner Jesus. Perhaps some or all of that presented itself to Rolando in the nether moments of his passage from this life into the next one.

I pray so.