Beyond Imagining

Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.

- Lore Segal

They were going to die. It was now several years since Lotte had died in an assisted-living facility. Then, when Covid worried their ­children, Ruth had undertaken to Zoom ladies’ lunch. She suggested that anyone who had something to say should show a hand.

Farah put up her hand. She said, “I don’t find it difficult to think about . . . ,” then paused in surprise at not being able to say “dying,” “about choosing not to live if I’m going blind.”

Bessie, Zooming from Old Rockingham, said, “That would be Colin’s choice when he hurts and he hurts all the time.”

Bridget raised her hand. “I think that the reason I think I won’t mind being dead is that I can’t imagine it, and I don’t think we know how to believe what we aren’t able to imagine.”

“You want to repeat that?” Ruth asked her.

“No,” Bridget said and laughed. “I’m not sure that I could.”

Then Colin died and Bessie allowed herself to collapse. Her daughter Eve called Ruth to tell her that Bessie was in a Connecticut hospital. Ruth called her there and reported to the group: “Bessie says the room is bright and pleasant enough. I lamely asked her how she was feeling, and she said, ‘Sad. Sad and ill.’ ”

When Farah called her, Bessie said, “Eve wants me to temporarily move into our minuscule Ninety-fourth Street pied-à-terre, which I had made over to her.”

“That’s a good plan, is it, ­temporarily?”

“Temporarily. Colin and I agreed that Old Rockingham must go to his ­children. It was never my world. There’s a line I remember, from I forget which school poem, to ‘dance an hour beneath the beeches.’ That’s what my Connecticut years have been. It’s New York that’s for real.”

Hope said, “Ruth has been hosting our Zooms all this time and we’ve never done her agenda.”

Ruth asked, “What’s my agenda? I forget.”

“You said you wanted us to discuss our take on wokeness?”