Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir

by Paul Monette

After one of his Wednesday sessions with Dr. Martin, Roger reported that he had admitted he’d had a good life. I remember how lucidly he repeated the phrase, amazed almost to be saying such a curiously final thing, and with no foreboding of death in the tone, or nothing gloomy at least. But I can’t be sure, for I was behind in the death department. Even now, when I’m all caught up, it bewilders me to try to figure what he knew and I didn’t. I had an appointment with Martin myself a month after Roger died. The first thing he said was: “He loved you greatly.” Then he explained how Roger had gotten beyond the fear of death. Toward the end, he said, Roger’s world was one of constricted hopes—Will I have enough energy to work with Fred? Will I be able to eat my supper? “It’s impossible to conceive of ourselves without ego,” Martin said, but that is where Roger arrived. I can’t, of course, know what he must have thought in the hours when he lay there quietly, all but blind. I only know we never seemed any different, not between ourselves. And I felt no shadow of death when he said that his life had been good. Mine too, I thought with a pang of pride.