Angel Dies at the End

Saying goodbye is a special kind of heartache.

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As I walk into the ICU room number 12, I am preparing myself for what is there waiting. I’m here to support my friend Alex, whom I wrote about in my article This Is Why I Don’t Have Gay Friends, in what is (hopefully) the hardest thing that she will ever go through in her entire life. I’m also here to say goodbye to her wife, Angel. I walk in and am surprised to find only two souls are in this room. I am one of them. Angel is the other.

Of course, I managed to show up during the first moment Alex has left the hospital in nearly 3 weeks. I sit awkwardly in the stuffed rolling chair by the window and text my friend to inquire where she has gone.

You see, Angel and I have never been what you’d call close. Even so, I like to think though we never got to know each other super well, there was mutual respect and even genuine like between us. There was on my end, anyway.

To be alone with her like this feels like voyeurism. To be here at all, in what is surely her most vulnerable moment on this earth, feels too intimate for what we were to each other. I feel like I’m stealing something. I didn’t earn the right to witness her like this. Someone as strong and independent as this woman, she wouldn’t like it.