Devra (left) and Leslie were paired as college roommates more than 30 years ago. Today, Devra participates in the Avon Walk, not only to raise money for a cure, but to stay connected to her lifelong friend.

Nearly 2,000 of us gathered at the foot of the Washington Monument on an early May morning waiting for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer to begin. Clouds of coffee and sunblock hung in the warm, humid air and a song about being strong against all odds thumped out from the loudspeakers like a hopped-up heartbeat.

A group of women wearing pink tulle skirts and black T-shirts embroidered ‘Tutus for Tatas’ across the chest moved toward me as I bent over to tie my sneaker. The fronts of their hats were inscribed in black sharpie: “For Mom”; “In loving memory of Susie”; “For Cathy, Barb and Allison.”

One of them greeted me when I stood up. “Hi, I’m Mary. Who are you walking for?” she asked, smiling and scanning my unadorned T-shirt for clues.

“My friend Leslie,” I said, who was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years earlier.

The music faded as a man called our attention to the stage. “Good morning,” the speaker’s deep voice boomed. “My name is Mark and I’m walking for my three sisters who were all diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time and died within two years of each other.”

Some walkers stopped warming up their hamstrings to applaud. I reached into my fanny pack for a tissue and before anyone had a chance to recover a woman wearing a bright pink Nicki Minaj wig stepped up to the microphone. “Hello. My name is Margaret and I am 38 years old. This is my second Avon Walk. Four years ago I walked for my aunt Joanie, who is a 26-year survivor. Now, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, I am proud to say I am a survivor too.”

A woman from the Avon Foundation was the last to speak. She told us that every three minutes someone is diagnosed with breast cancer and every 13 minutes a life is lost to the disease, numbers many of us already knew by heart. I swallowed down the fear that I could become one of her statistics and applauded with the other potential victims around me as she officially opened the event.

As I started to walk, I thought about how lucky I was that Leslie and I were paired as college roommates more than 30 years ago. One evening, a month or two into our freshman year, Leslie and I walked back to our room after dinner to play backgammon, which had become a nightly ritual. We got to know each other over those games, taking turns asking questions about our families, our friends back home, and our likes and dislikes. We always sat on Leslie’s bed, made up with dark green flannel sheets and a red and black plaid wool blanket, all from L.L. Bean, a store based in Maine where her family had a vacation home. On the shelf next to her bed, she lined up three family photographs in matching black frames and a clock radio tuned to the local “Music of Your Life” station. Across the room, I had a rainbow striped quilt on my unmade bed and a poster of Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I. taped to the wall above it.

About 15 minutes into our first game, the fire alarm went off, and as we rushed out of the room, I caught my finger in the door when I tried to slam it shut. The pain was instant and excrutiating.

Once outside, I began to panic. “I need a doctor, but I think the student health center closed at 6,” I sobbed to Leslie, holding up my swollen finger. My parents had always handled situations like this, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Come on,” Leslie said, taking charge. “There’s a hospital three blocks down the street that I pass every day on my way to class. We can walk.”

Five minutes later we were standing in front of the emergency room of the local Veterans Hospital. It was dark and looked closed except for the lighted sign indicating an ambulance entrance. We knocked on the locked door, and a nurse slid open a peek-a-boo panel. All we could see was her face, tilted upward as though she were standing on tippy toes.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

Leslie stepped in front of me and said, “My roommate slammed her finger in a door, and we think it’s broken. Is there a doctor we can see?”

“Is your roommate a veteran?” The nurse’s lips were thin and creased. She smiled, but only with the bottom half of her face.

“Should she be?” Leslie asked.

“If she wants to be treated here, either she or someone in her immediate family needs to be a veteran.”

Leslie looked at me. “Know any veterans, Devra?”

I shook my head, then asked, “What if I split my head open and was standing here with blood running down my face? Would I have to be a veteran to see a doctor?”

Leslie looked at her shoes and stifled a laugh while we waited for a reply. Her right leg started to shake, her tell when she was uncomfortable.

“There is a public hospital half a mile east of here. They take anybody,” the nurse said sharply. Then she lowered herself and snapped the panel shut, so hard it made my finger throb even more.

To distract me from the pain as we walked, Leslie started playing a game to see who could come up with the most gruesome injuries that the veterans-only hospital would turn away.

“What if I were carrying your severed leg while you hopped on one foot. Do you think they’d let us in?”

I knew it was my turn. “Or how about if I just swallowed a pencil and was experiencing stabbing pain in my stomach. Would she open the entire door?”

“Good one. Or what if your eyeball fell out and you showed it to the nurse through the peep hole. Would you get to see a veteran’s doctor? Get it? Peep hole? See a doctor?” Leslie’s words rode out on waves of laughter. We had to stop walking for a moment to give in to our giggles.

I was treated right away at the public hospital, and Leslie and I continued to make each other laugh throughout our friendship. In the late ’80s, we were in each other’s weddings, and when my marriage failed, Leslie offered the wisdom that helped me move on: “Dev, I’m sorry you’re hurting, but everything in life is a crapshoot, so quit your crying and live your life.”

And when she found out a long-term boyfriend dumped me around the same time she was diagnosed, she called and said, “In a lot of ways cancer is easier to deal with than a broken heart because there are treatments for cancer. You’re going to be fine. So am I.”

I participated in my first Avon Walk in 2004 to help Leslie in some way, as she helped me so many times since the night I slammed my finger in the door. Even though Leslie said she didn’t need anyone’s help, I wanted to raise money for the cure she felt we were “this close” to finding. At the opening ceremony I listened to the stories of loss and survival but didn’t relate, because even though Leslie had been fighting recurring cancer for two years, she had everyone convinced that she was going to be fine. I felt the same at the 2005 Walk, probably because Leslie was still alive.

Leslie died in 2006, a few weeks before my third Avon Walk and just shy of her 46th birthday. While leafing through an issue of Oprah magazine during my post-walk pedicure, a J. Crew ad caught my eye. The male model was our dorm manager from freshman year, a closeted, flirtatious blond artist who had a steady stream of boyfriends he didn’t think we noticed. I started to tear out the page to send to Leslie, who I knew would get a kick out of seeing it, but froze when I remembered that she was gone.

The more time passes, the more trouble I have recalling the smell of Leslie’s Clinique Happy perfume, or her quick laugh when I said something she thought was funny, or the way she made me feel safe and loved with her caring wisdom. I miss all of that. As long as she lived, she never lost her sense of humor; around her I always felt as bright and sparkly as she was to me. Gosh, I miss that, too. When she died, our story, our inside jokes, our friendship died with her, and I struggle to keep the image of us—of who I was with her and who we were together—clear in my mind. It’s as though a photograph of her is fading, which makes me feel like I am disappearing too.

I continue to participate in the Avon Walk every year, despite the unwelcome bond I now have with the other walkers who have lost someone they loved to the disease, because when I walk I replay my favorite moments with Leslie. Somehow my grief gives way to the joy I used to feel in her presence, and, for a brief time, I am whole again. Yes, I am committed to raise money to help find the cure that Leslie believed was just steps away. I fundraise and walk with the determination that breast cancer will become something that used to be, like eight-track tapes and rotary dial phones. But mostly I walk to stay connected to Leslie—my lifelong friend—and to keep the part of me that was a part of us alive.

A Walk To Remember The Saturday Evening Post

I arrive early at the hospice in-patient unit every Tuesday afternoon so the volunteer finishing her shift can brief me before I start mine.

“The patient in room four has visitors,” Deborah says on a early autumn Tuesday. “The one in room seven is actively dying. His wife is with him and their daughter is on the way. The woman in eight is sleeping and the man in room 10, Mr. Greene, will stand in his doorway when he wants a cigarette.”

“Wait, what? I didn’t know patients are allowed to smoke,” I said.

“Yes, of course, but outside,” Deborah replies. “His cigarettes are on the nurse’s conference table.”

Ten minutes later, I look up and see Mr. Greene standing in the doorway of his room. I don’t know how long he has been there since he is as quiet as a shadow. Mr. Greene is wearing plaid flannel pajama bottoms and navy velvet slippers. A purple hospital gown hangs like a drop cloth over his skeletal frame. The middle of his face is wrapped in a gauze mask that stretches flat across the hole where his nose should be, and his left eye is closed and bulging so far out that it looks like it could fall off his face with the slightest motion. Although I read ‘sinus cancer’ in his chart, I am startled by how grotesque he looks.

“Mr. Greene, what can I do for you?” I look down at my desk and pretend to straighten up a row of folders while I regain my composure. I flash to my dear friend Leslie who died from breast cancer after a long, bitter battle with the disease.

“Devra, get me out of here!” I can still hear Leslie’s frantic, final words, barked as though she had somewhere to go and was deathly afraid of being late. Leslie was not referring to the hospice room. I believe Leslie wanted out of her cancer-ridden body and she knew I would understand.

I felt helpless standing by her bedside as she pleaded, tugging at her oxygen line with one hand and pulling off her covers, exposing her scarred chest, with the other. The angry red criss-cross lines that marked her torso caught me by surprise and my legs started to buckle. Then she screeched again, bringing me back to her.

“I’m with you, Lester,” I said, using her college nickname, “and I want to help you get out of here.” I tried to sound reassuring even though I had no idea what I could do to relieve her struggle.

Leslie’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, but I knew she could hear me. So I took hold of her hand and talked to her—a steady stream of reassurance, jokes, and silly commentary on me and the others in the room (her husband, daughter, parents, sister)—until she quieted down and drifted into a deep, restful sleep.

I felt my fears dissolve as I focused on easing hers. And, I realized that I actually was helping Leslie by simply being there.

The year after Leslie died, I became a hospice volunteer. I reasoned if I could provide some comfort to Leslie in her final days, maybe I could help others. But right now I feel like a fraud because I am frightened of Mr. Greene, as if he were the monster he appears to be. I am also afraid that I will not be able to step outside my fear of death; the way I could with Leslie.

“I want a smoke.” Mr. Greene’s voice is soft but deep and clear.

I stand, maybe a little too quickly, and glance around for someone else—anyone else—to take him outside. There is no one.

“OK, I’ll grab your cigarettes while you take a seat in that wheelchair next to your door,” I say, my voice a little shaky. I hope Mr. Greene does not sense my discomfort.

“I don’t need to sit in no wheelchair,” Mr. Greene says in a weak protest, as though he knows he won’t get his way but has to try.

I do not want to take his pride away from him, but I stand firm. “We both know the hospice has a rule about this,” I say. “Please, sit down.”

I grab Mr. Greene’s Ziploc baggie of Newports and Tastee Diner matches off of the conference table. As I get closer to Mr. Greene, who is now sitting in the wheelchair, I notice the bandage wrapped around his concave face is leaking a thick yellowish liquid and I feel my throat get thick. My gut reaction is to look away, and I remind myself that my goal is to make him—and every hospice patient—as comfortable as possible. I recall Leslie once telling me she did not like to be stared at or treated differently when she was bald and bloated from chemo, so I take a deep breath of courage and step behind the wheelchair.

“My name is Devra. I volunteer here on Tuesday afternoons,” I say, as I start to push. The wheelchair moves easily, as though it is empty.

“Harold,” Mr. Greene says.

“Harold. It is nice to meet you.”

I guide him toward the exit and spin the chair around to back out, using my right hip to open the door. We roll onto the stone patio which is lined with low green boxwoods and benches dedicated to people who spent their last days in the hospice. Beyond the shrubs is a sloping lawn dotted with oak trees that look like they are trying to reach up to heaven. Some still have a few resistant dried leaves clinging to the upper branches. The air is crisp around the edges, and I did not remember to put on my coat, so I steer Mr. Greene over to a wooden bench in the sun.

After I make sure Mr. Greene’s chair is secure, I sit down next to him and take out the Newports. I give the pack a shake and straighten my arm in front of Mr. Greene who slowly pulls out a cigarette and places it between his lips. I strike a match and hold it up between us when I realize I am on his blind side and he can not see it. The flame travels quickly to my fingertips and dies out. There is only one match left. I strike it, this time standing in front of him as I put the flame up against the cigarette. “Here you go,” I say. He tightens his mouth and inhales. The cigarette shrinks in and glows red. Mr. Greene takes a long pull, thanks me, and crosses his legs.

I sit back down, point my face up to the sun and close my eyes while I search for a safe topic of conversation. “It says in your chart you lived in New Orleans during Katrina,” I say, turning to look at Mr. Greene.

“Yup,” he replies, staring straight ahead.

“New Orleans is a great city. Did you listen to a lot of music while you were there?”

“Nope.”

“What did you do there for fun?”

“Drank.”

Dead end. I am determined to bond with with Mr. Greene so I wait a beat then try a different subject.

“Have any family around here?”

“Nope.”

Another dead end. Since Mr. Greene does not feel like talking, I close my eyes and listen to the slow beat of his inhales and exhales. When he goes quiet, I glance over. He is holding up the smoldering butt. “Got another?” he asks.

I consider telling him one is the limit, then realize that sitting outside and smoking on a lovely autumn day is one of the few pleasures available to him. I quickly hand Mr. Greene a cigarette so he can light it with the one he is holding since there are no more matches. Mr. Greene can not quite make the connection so I gently guide his hand to help him. His skin is cool, and crinkly like tissue paper. After the new cigarette starts to burn, he leans over to tamp out the old butt against the pavement. He checks to make sure it is dead before he flicks it into the bushes behind us.

I lean back and wait quietly for him to tell me he is ready to go inside. He startles me when he speaks. “Them’s nice boots. You get them around here?”

When I open my eyes and sit up, I see Mr. Greene studying my feet. “These boots? I got them in Texas about 15 years ago. They’re old favorites,” I say, delighted that he is talking to me, as though it is a signal that I am well-suited to be here.

“Yes sir, them’s nice boots. Very nice boots. I had a pair of boots once,” Mr. Greene says, holding his cigarette away from his face as he sits back and rests his elbows on the arm of his wheelchair. “Bought them in Washington years ago.” He brings the cigarette back up to his mouth, inhales, nods, and then exhales. “Didn’t take long before my stepfather stole them,” he says. A tail of ashes drops off of his cigarette and lands on his left foot. He leans over to clean off his slipper then sits back up. “Should have seen that coming.”

Now that he has opened up and seems at ease, I want him to keep talking, to tell me more about his life, but he does not. We sit in silence while he slowly finishes his cigarette. I wonder what I was so afraid of earlier and wish I could start today’s shift over.

“As much as I am enjoying sitting here with you, I think it is getting a little chilly,” I say, reluctant to break the spell, but the sun is starting to slip behind the building. “You ready to go inside now, Harold?”

“Yup. Thank you, dear,” he says, and I am glad he cannot see my eyes well up when he calls me dear.

I slowly wheel Mr. Greene back to his room and stay with him until he gets back into bed. When I ask, he says he does not need anything else. He is tired and would like to rest. So I go back to my desk and wait for him to appear in the doorway again. He does not before my shift ends.

When the next volunteer arrives, I brief him as I gather my belongings. On my way out I walk into Mr. Greene’s room to say goodbye, but he is sleeping peacefully. I do not want to wake him so I hold his hand and watch him breathe for a few moments before I leave, already looking forward to my next shift.

Some names have been changed in this story out of respect for privacy.

If you are interested in becoming a hospice volunteer, go to hospicefoundation.org/volunteering.

Meeting Mr. Greene—Journal of a Hospice Volunteer The Saturday Evening Post

Devra and Jim Fishman on their wedding day.

“Sweetheart, what would you like for lunch today?” I asked as I stood in the kitchen clenching the handle of the open refrigerator.

I wondered if my husband Jim could hear the resentment biting into my voice, like a termite chewing through a piece of good wood. This would be the 81st meal I would have prepared for us since he retired four weeks earlier.

Jim and I had just come back from the gym and were still wearing our slightly sweaty workout clothes. He sat at our glass-top kitchen table with his chair angled, holding up the Washington Post in front of him. The sun flickered off of the silver wedding band he always wore, the same design as my gold one, which was upstairs on our bureau. I left it at home because I didn’t like to feel my fingers pinch between my ring and the free weights I lifted.

“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Jim replied, without looking up. Then he pulled back one side of the paper and added, “I love spending time with you.”

“And I love spending time with you, too,” I responded, then thought, I just wish it wasn’t quite as much time, though.

Two years ago, with Jim’s encouragement, I quit my marketing job to write and take care of time-consuming housekeeping tasks so that we could enjoy carefree evenings and weekends together. I wrote every day, met friends for lunch, took a regular yoga class, and became a weekly hospice volunteer. My new routine was so personally fulfilling that it left me wondering when I ever had time to work.

When Jim retired last month, I rejoiced for his newfound freedom but didn’t expect it to eat into mine. Once Jim was home he wanted us to have every meal together. When I announced I was going to the grocery store, he would ask me to wait until he was finished reading the paper so he could come with me. If I said that I wanted to go for a walk, he would go get his shoes. My writing slipped and my friendships started to fray as I tried to adapt to his new schedule. For the first time since we met, I wanted less time with Jim, not more.

I adore my husband. Our lives fit together easily like a child’s first jigsaw puzzle. I love Jim’s quick wit, personal integrity, and ability to have thoughtful, emotional, and even difficult, honest conversations. From the moment we started dating, years after each of our first marriages ended in divorce, our priority was to be together as much as possible, as though we were trying to make up for all of the time we spent apart.

So how could I be losing my appetite for the man I adore, the man who makes me laugh at least three times a day? And, how would I tell the love of my life that I no longer shared his vision of togetherness? I longed to move anonymously through a Whole Foods Market once again. I missed the days when I would be at my desk, realize I was hungry, silently go to the refrigerator, take out food, eat it, and get back to my writing. I was beginning to feel like I was disappearing into a morphed image of the two of us, and I was frightened that neither Jim nor I would like the new half-person I would inevitably become.

My husband reminded me every day that I was the reason he was happier than he had ever been and that being together was what he wanted and enjoyed more than anything else. We hadn’t discussed what we wanted our lives to look like once he retired, and now I was wondering if I would fail as a wife and partner simply because I wanted—no, needed—for us to be separate individuals in our marriage. I had heard of this happening to long-married couples, but we were still giddy newlyweds who celebrate our ‘anniversary’ every Friday, the day that we eloped at a local lawyer’s office more than 200 weeks ago.

I knew the only way to tell him was with direct, loving honesty, the same way we discussed everything else, except my stomach started to tighten as I considered how this might affect our relationship. Jim might need togetherness as much as I needed space. Couples split up over that kind of incompatibility and I couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to us.

“We’re having a big salad,” I said, as I slowly opened a drawer in the fridge, pulled out romaine, celery, onion, and tomatoes and placed them on the counter near the sink, all the while gathering my thoughts and composing my opening sentence. I opened a can of tuna then rinsed and methodically chopped the vegetables into bite-size pieces, tapping out a message that lunch would be ready soon. Taking my cue, Jim folded his newspaper, stood up and set the table.

“Sweetheart,” I said, as I brought the salad bowl over and sat down. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” he asked as he sat down.

I intended to speak slowly and evenly, but the words rushed out, like a pot boiling over. “Preparing and sharing all these meals. It’s too much for me. I miss all of the things I was doing before you retired. I miss who I was before you retired.”

“But I thought this is what we wanted, the very reason I retired—so that we could be together all of the time,” Jim said, shrinking back into his chair and locking onto my eyes with his. He looked like a little boy who just found out the truth about Santa Claus.

I tried to explain. “Sweetheart, I feel like I’m losing my balance with all of this togetherness. Don’t you want to pursue your own activities—separate to mine?”

I saw his eyebrows push together as he leaned forward and started to speak. “I have no interest in jumping up and finding stuff to do right now. I just retired from having to be somewhere, reporting to someone, five days a week. Right now I am perfectly happy spending my time with you.”

“Of course I understand that. I’m sorry,” I said, trying to deflect the growing tension. “I enjoy being with you, too, but I’m afraid you won’t love the person I might become if I don’t stay nourished with my writing, my friends, and my exercise classes. I’m also afraid I won’t like the person I might become.”

“I can’t imagine not loving you, but I have noticed that you haven’t been your usual, lighthearted self lately,” he said. “And, I love your usual, lighthearted self.” He started to blink, which I took as a good sign. “But I’m not sure what to do here.”

For better or worse, but not for lunch.

“I love you, too, sweetheart,” I said, reaching for his hand before I continued. “I have been thinking about this and have a proposal for us to try. How about we eat breakfast together, taking turns preparing, spend mornings—and lunch—on our own, then meet back up for dinner, which we can also take turns planning?”

“So we’re married for better or worse, but not for lunch?” he joked, a sure sign we would survive this hurdle.

“Yes, I guess you could say that,” I said, leaning over for a quick kiss. “I think it’s worth a try, don’t you?”

“OK, yes,” he said, slowly nodding his head, still smiling. “Now please will you pass the salad dressing? I’m starving.”

Suddenly, I was too.

For Better Or Worse The Saturday Evening Post