Nothing Was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison Page B

long evenings of laughter and friendship. Those summer nights with our friends were the moon and the stars to both of us; they will be with me until I cease to remember anything. Our conversations leapt everywhere: from the misbegotten love affairs of our colleagues to scandals in science, from stem cell research to Thomas Aquinas. We talked about the elegance of the universe and how we thought the world would end. We talked on and on through the summer nights, taking in more wine than others would have said was good for us, and spoke of Rome and politics, of our families, and of sundry microbes, any of which would cause a thinking person to pray for a competence the government did not possess. These evenings of friendship were unrivaled times, tinged by the overhanging apprehension of Richard’s mortality. It was fierce and gentle friendship, and it made our way to his death more navigable, less lonely.
    There was a fine-tuning of Richard’s and my temperaments during the years we lived with his heart disease, lymphoma, and lung cancer. Before, our differences had triggered sporadic tension; now our basic natures served us better. Our sensibilities and quirks evolved into something more shared and complex, more mingled. The intensity of my moods and periodic flares ebbed with time and with the seriousness of circumstance. Richard’s reserved ways changed into something more intense, outward, and nuanced. He became more responsive to the feelings of others, and held his emotions less close to his chest. He had always been physically affectionate with me, but now he sought me even more. When I came into a room, after even a short absence, he held on to me in a way I had not known him to do before. Just to feel. To sense. To draw upon.
    Later, when he no longer had the strength to take a bath, he reached out to take in the world beyond him in newer ways. He would ask, after I had bathed, to breathe in the scents on my arms and my neck, to take in the smell of the honeysuckle or moss rose, lime blossom salts or eucalyptus. He had never done this before, and indeed had laughed at my many bottles and jars. Kay’s Excess of Scents, he would say to our friends: Why have one bottle when you can have seven?
    Richard kept his essential privacy; he had been and would remain a private man. But he reached out more to other people. Acquaintances and colleagues saw the warmer side of him that I and a few others had always known. And now, when he reached out for me, vulnerable, I was glad that I could bring to him a calmer self. I was someone he could put his faith in, and it gave me pleasure. For so long, for so many years, I had needed him, leaned upon his love and judgment. Through him, I had rediscovered some semblance of my true North, and now he drew upon his gift to me. There was fairness in all of this.
    The summer drew to a close in quiet ways. Richard felt well enough to work hard on his science and to see patients. I wrote and worked at Hopkins and looked after him. The tumor in his right lung grew.
    In early September, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were attacked. I was on an early-morning flight to Atlanta for meetings at the Carter Center; it took off forty minutes before the first hijacked airplane flew into the World Trade Center and landed twenty minutes after American Airlines Flight 77 had crashed into the west side of the Pentagon. By the time I arrived at the Carter Center, it was ringed by Secret Service cars dispatched to protect President and Mrs. Carter.
    The telephone lines to Washington were choked, and it was late in the day before I could reach Richard. When at last we were able to talk, he described the eerie sight of hundreds of Washingtonians walking as fast as they could up Connecticut Avenue, briefcases in hand, talking into their cell phones and looking unmoored. I felt panicked at being so far away from him and from Washington, but I could not get back. No planes were flying, buses and trains