It's usually great seeing old friends. You don't have to plan what to say, watch your words, suffer awkward silences, or try to guide and manipulate the conversation to where you want it to go as you might with a client or a workmate or even, frankly, a partner when there are chores to be allocated or holiday destinations decided.
With old friends, you just turn up, crap on and see who can make the other laugh first. If you say something that comes out wrong, they're not going to judge you.
Surprisingly, I'd discovered this holds true even when the old friend happens to be dying. This was the seventh time in the last six months I'd driven the 3.5 hours along the boring Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra to see Jum and, despite the pain he was in and the terror he was facing, we'd had some great times.
Chat, coffee, laughs, chook and rolls and coleslaw, reminiscing about the past, analysing the present, trying to avoid the future, nice walks through leafy, suburban Canberra, even if each was at a slower pace and for a shorter distance than the previous one.
It had been more fun than grim. For me, anyway. Who knew what was really going on inside Jum's head, but he had done a good job of at least pretending he was enjoying himself.
This visit, however, was different because it would probably be my last. I'd never done a last visit before. My mum had died 17 years earlier, but suddenly and unexpectedly overseas, and all I remember about our last conversation before she left was that she had looked pointedly at my tummy and suggested some exercise. "Just a bit, you know, chubby."
A few years after that, I'd had another opportunity to have a last conversation with someone important to me, but I'd ducked it.
I sat on a bank at the edge of one of Canberra's three billion parks, and for the first time ever, planned out what I wanted to say to Jum.
I wanted to tell him what a legend he was, how great a friend he'd been, and how well he had dealt with the shit sandwich he'd been served.
How did I do it, though, without it sounding stilted or forced or scripted or mawkish or awkward or just weird and wrong?
What if it sounded like a premature eulogy? What if I said too much, or not enough, or got tangled up? What if I had to spend the next twenty years reliving how I'd completely fucked up my last conversation with one of the best friends I'd ever had?
There was something else I wanted to tell Jum. Something I knew would mean a lot to him. I wanted to tell him that the mission we had set out on months ago had succeeded. That we had done it, and he would be leaving a legacy that would help everyone else who found themselves in the same terrible situation he was in.
I couldn't, though, because I didn't know if we had. I'd promised myself I'd do everything I could to get it done before he died, but so far I hadn't brought home the bacon.
In the park a mum kicked a soccer ball to her little boy, who took a giant wind-up, missed the ball completely and toppled backwards onto his bum. Normally I would have chuckled at that. Not today. I picked myself up and got in the car. Off to see my buddy. Scared shitless.
An hour and a half later I left his house, deeply shaken, drove to the same park, sat on the same grassy bank and punched it until my hand hurt. Then I had a cry. Then I tried to figure out what to do.
Part of it was Jum's fault. He was supposed to keep his illness at bay for longer, so we had more time, but for the past few months, every few weeks a doctor had managed his expectations further downwards.
We had been moving as fast as we could, but were stumbling about in a misty, unfamiliar world, playing a game everyone knew the rules to except us.
Who knew what rookie mistakes we'd made? Campaigns like ours rarely succeeded. When they did, they usually took years. We'd had just a few months.
I punched the ground again. Stupid ground. Just lying there in that smug way.
A pensioner strolling past gave me a "That's not how we behave in Canberra" look. I barely managed to stop myself telling him to f--- off.
Not trusting myself to speak, I texted one of federal Health Minister Greg Hunt's advisers, hoping there was still a chance.
