part0060

By the spring of 1999, Terence was living with Christy in his recently completed house on the Big Island. He was busy dealing with various investors and others involved in organizing an event to be held on the island in September, the AllChemical Arts Conference. Billed as an exploration of the relationship between hallucinogens and the creative process, the event would feature Terence as the keynote speaker, followed by other well-known figures in the psychedelic and visionary arts community, including Alex Grey, Robert Venosa, Annie Sprinkle, Tom Robbins, Mark Pesce, Bruce Damer, and others. It was going to be quite an event.

I wasn’t invited, which was OK with me; I was more on the science side of things and would not have had much to contribute. Terence and I hadn’t fully resolved the tensions that had developed between us over the last few years, but we were at least getting along. In the meantime, I was busy producing the herbal-supplement desk reference and lining up other consulting gigs. I wasn’t focused on developments in Hawaii.

I immediately called Dan to get the full story. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, he said, but he’d gotten an urgent message from Christy. Terence had recently returned from a long, exhausting tour on the East coast, she said, and had been feeling poorly for several days. He’d been suffering flu-like symptoms and had taken to his bed. That alone was not unusual. Terence was often exhausted after a tour and would sometimes be sick for a few days afterward. But this time was different; he hadn’t bounced back. As Christy told Dan, Terence had gotten up at one point and suffered a massive seizure. They both knew this was serious, and he had to get to the hospital. Somehow, Christy managed to get Terence into their jeep and started careening down the hill on the rugged road as Terence faded in and out of consciousness. She had called 911 from the Internet phone connection; they had no cell phones. While they waited at the bottom for the ambulance, Terence had another seizure, lost consciousness, and appeared near death.

Christy flagged down two passing motorcyclists for help. As it turned out, one of them had EMT training and was able to resuscitate Terence, almost certainly saving his life. The ambulance finally arrived, and the paramedics administered anti-seizure medication and took him to Kona Community Hospital. At the hospital, a CT scan revealed no signs of an aneurism, but it did detect what was called a “shadow” in the right anterior part of Terence’s brain. That was all Dan knew, but the word tumor hovered unspoken in the air.

When the taxi left me off at the medical center after an overnight flight, Christy was already there, as was Terence’s son, Finn, who had been staying near him on the Big Island. It was the first time I’d met Christy, who was blonde, blue-eyed, and petite. Her feat of getting Terence down to the road seemed that much more remarkable when I saw how small she was. We would get to know each other well over the following months. Terence’s daughter, Klea, was in Europe when she got the news; she soon arrived as well.

Terence had gotten an MRI by then, and the higher-resolution technology confirmed our worst fears. There was a dark mass, a tumor, about the size of a walnut, buried deep in his right forebrain. It would take a biopsy to determine the type of cancer, but we all feared the worst: glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer. Fewer than two percent of glioblastoma sufferers survive more than a year after their tumors are detected. It’s a rare cancer (about 20,000 cases in the United States each year) and all but incurable: surgery and radiation might prolong life at most a few months. Terence’s neuro-oncologist was a compassionate man and an excellent doctor. He also struck me as one of the more depressed physicians I’d ever met, possibly because, as a specialist in this lethal disease, he’d never saved a single patient. His advice to Terence was blunt: he advised him to put his affairs in order. Terence might have a year to live, probably less, and no more than eighteen months. The chances that the tumor was benign were slim to none, the doctor said, and the biopsy soon verified that.

By the time we had this conversation at Terence’s bedside, he was feeling pretty good. He’d been given massive doses of anti-seizure medicine and steroids to reduce swelling. The combined effects, bizarrely, made him slightly euphoric and pumped. He was sitting up in bed, fully conscious, no pain, cracking jokes, while the rest of us were looking glum. The hospital had a nice inner courtyard and garden, and Finn and Terence and I sat there for a while under an enormous banyan tree in the late afternoon sun and tried to sort things out. I was agitated, overwhelmed with feelings of fear, apprehension, helplessness, and desperation. Any residual anger with Terence over our petty differences had evaporated. My job was to be there for my brother as fully as I could.

My conversation with him in the garden was intense and strange. It was almost as if we were back at La Chorrera, twenty-eight years earlier and thousands of miles away. This was the next twist of the helix, I told him; what we had started at La Chorrera was not finished. Our experiment was still in progress and only now nearing its resolution. We were about to encounter each other again, moving backwards and forwards in time, as we had been then, and ever since. But now it was my turn to be the anchor, the one who stayed behind; Terence would be the hyperspatial explorer, the one taking the shamanic hero’s journey to the edge of the universe, perhaps never to return.

I don’t know where my inspiration came from, whether I was channeling the Teacher, which is what it felt like, or whether I was slipping again into some kind of manic state. Perhaps I was just trying to frame the conversation in terms that were familiar, and that would give Terence (and all of us) some hope. But I had a clear vision of the task in front of us. I told him our theory at La Chorrera had been right: beta-carbolines and tryptamines did intercalate into DNA, as other investigators since then had confirmed. The brain tumor, like any tumor, was a mass of rapidly dividing cells. We had to carry out what amounted to shamanic surgery, by administering massive doses of Ayahuasca and/or psilocybin, and directing sound energy—the “hypercarbolation buzz”—at the tumor. The buzz would trigger the intercalation of the compounds and would block replication of DNA in the rapidly growing cells. The net effect would be to arrest the growth of the tumor and cause it to shrink.

That was the best outcome; but if it didn’t work, I said, our shamanic surgery would build Terence’s resurrection body; we’d reconstruct him as the starship, the hyper-dimensional object, the philosopher’s stone, all the images of a super-technological fusion of mind and matter we’d invoked at La Chorrera. In other words, the treatment would either save Terence, or transform him into a hyper-dimensional vehicle that, at the moment of transition, would allow him to seize the controls and sail off, painlessly, joyfully, and triumphantly, into the sunset of eternity. We’d almost done that in La Chorrera; this was our second chance.

Over the previous summer, I’d been doing Ayahuasca workshops with Luis Eduardo. I knew he’d been planning to visit Hawaii in July, which suddenly seemed providential. Luis Eduardo, one of our closest friends, had become an excellent ayahuasquero . I’ve told the story of how Terence had met him after his second trip to La Chorrera, and how later Luis Eduardo and I worked and traveled together over the years, sharing many adventures. We’d invite him to take part in this shamanic work with us, I said. I don’t know if my raving convinced Terence, but he reluctantly agreed at least to give it a try.

Back in the world of allopathic medicine, Terence was facing very limited options. His biopsy had confirmed that the tumor was indeed glioblastoma multiforme. Moreover, the tumor was inoperable. Conventional chemotherapy drugs tended to be ineffective, the oncologist said, because they didn’t readily cross the blood-brain barrier and thus had trouble penetrating the tumor. With surgery ruled out, his doctor recommended a procedure called “gamma knife,” which targeted the tumor with a beam of focused, high-energy gamma radiation. The beam could potentially “stun” the tumor and slow its growth, or even force it into remission in rare cases. That procedure would be followed by six weeks of focused soft-radiation therapy to catch any surviving cancer cells. Such tumors often recurred; the follow-up therapy improved the chances of remission after the initial gamma-knife procedure. According to the doctor, the diffuse border of such a tumor sends articulations into the normal surrounding tissue. He compared these to “mycelia,” as opposed to the “fruiting body” of the main tumor mass.

What were the long-term consequences if the treatments actually worked? Most likely dementia, we were told: possibly moderate, possibly severe. To think of my brother’s beautiful, scintillating mind being eaten away by a malignancy, or burned away by radiation, left me shaken. There were no good options. The gamma knife, crude as it was, seemed better than nothing. We agreed that the best course would be to have the procedure and then see what happened. After a brief time to recover, Terence would then begin the follow-up radiation treatments, which were intended to buy time and quality of life during that time. The treatments were never referred to as a cure.

Word of Terence’s situation soon got out. Jill, his former girlfriend, showed up unexpectedly, having flown over from the Big Island as soon as she’d gotten the news. I was surprised and impressed by her compassion for Terence. To his credit, Terence received her warmly, and Christy did as well. Christy certainly hadn’t bargained for anything like this when she and Terence had hooked up. Now, as the person closest to Terence on a day-to-day basis, she’d been cast into the stressful role of primary caregiver, and she proved herself more than equal to the task.

Dan Levy, Terence’s agent, flew out from New York to see him. Thanks to the steroids and the anti-seizure meds, Terence felt quite well, and there was no reason for him to stay in the hospital after he’d recovered from the biopsy procedure. Friends who had places on Oahu offered us accommodations while Terence awaited the gamma knife procedure. The situation was almost surreal. We were going out for expensive meals every night and acting like a bunch of good friends on holiday. Terence seemed more cheerful and upbeat than I had seen him in some time.

A few days after the biopsy, the gamma knife “cybersurgery” went off without a hitch, as far as any one could tell. This high-tech procedure was akin to magic in that it harnessed invisible energies whose effectiveness we accepted on faith. Our faith was in science and technology, of course, but afterward there was no outward sign that anything had changed. Terence looked the same and felt the same, except for a little fatigue. But the docs assured us they had zapped the tumor good; there was nothing to do but wait. Their plan was to monitor the effects for a few weeks and then begin the six weeks of radiation therapy. Terence and Christy went home to the Big Island. I returned to Minnesota to handle some business matters and clear the decks as much as possible. We agreed that I would come back out later in the summer with Luis Eduardo after Terence had completed his radiation therapy in Honolulu.

As May turned into June and the weeks rolled on, word of Terence’s dire situation reached his fans. Many responded with an incredible outpouring of good wishes, love-energy, and many suggestions for alternative therapies. It was touching, and humbling, to realize that Terence was loved by so many. He had an enormous extended family, and everyone was pulling for him. It became impossible for him to respond to the hundreds of emails he got every day. Fortunately, Dan Levy, who maintained the levity.com servers where Terence’s website was housed, set up a page where we could post periodic updates, which are still there (www.levity.com/eschaton/index.html ).

I am not properly set up, mentally or technologically to receive or respond to email while I am in Honolulu getting my cancer treatments, but my goal is to come home to my secret rebel base on the Big Island every two weekends or so. And once again I am there. Just a bit of an update on my situation: it is now more than three weeks since I had the gamma knife surgery. The further it recedes into the past the better I feel. However I am having focused radiation treatments five days a week and the docs assure me that in a while, a couple of weeks or more I will begin to feel less well under the impact of that treatment. So this time is being presented by the allopathic guys (and gals) as a window of good feeling sure to fade. Naturally I go through all sorts of changes about my situation, and the drugs I take, seizure suppressing carbamazepine and the steroid decadron combine in different ways at different times and move me around from a kind of “whatever” euphoria to very emotional and thought provoking states.

I have had all sorts of advice and well meaning suggestions…but here is my sort of general position on my personal fight with brain cancer. I think that it was wise to have the gamma knife surgery, though it was radical and high tech and somewhat experimental it was important to reduce the size of the tumor. The follow-on soft focus radiation is more controversial in my own mind but as an old mushroom cultivator I know how very important it is to work clean and to not assume that a little contamination is a containable thing. I have so far refused chemotherapy…these therapies may have to be tried if things get worse further downstream. But my intuition is that the people who survive unusually long times are those who follow the surgery and radiation with extreme attention to cleaning up their diets and then supplement their diet very wisely. It is a wake up call to be very attentive to what goes into my body. You would think that an old psychonaut would have learned that long ago but what can I say? In other words attention to the details of food and nutrition will significantly prolong my life. How long? Who can say? People who are taken hostage for long periods inevitably develop accommodating relationships with their oppressors. Cancer seems to be a bit like that, at least to me now. If it insidiously undermines me I may change my tune but for the moment I accept no diagnosis, though I have deep respect for my doctors and I simply wish to believe that those who wish to live and who inform themselves concerning the details of human nutrition and metabolism have the best luck with these sorts of situations.

Generally my spirits are high and my life is certainly very interesting and more emotionally rich than before. I am being taught many things and I welcome this. And I welcome the love and support of friends, this is a mad and wild adventure at the fractal edge of life and death and space and time. Just where we love to be, right, shipmates? I will send more news as I can….

And the band played on.

By then I was back home in Minnesota, and Terence and Christy were spending five days a week St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu and weekends on the Big Island, as much as they were able. The optimistic tone of my own posts on the site mentioned above belied my true state of mind. I was anguished. There seemed to be no escape from this, all the evidence pointed to this disease being a death sentence; it was only a matter of time. But we were furiously searching for a solution.

We had plenty of help. The daughter of my friend Sid had a different kind of brain tumor, astrocytoma, and had been able to survive far beyond projected expectations using a number of different complementary and conventional treatments. Sid and his daughter and her physician were compassionate and generous about sharing information, and we were grateful for their advice. Sadly, considering how rare glioblastoma was supposed to be (I’m not sure I believe the statistics), our former neighbor from NIH days in Bethesda, Woody, came down with the same type of cancer at about the same time, so we were sharing information and support with his wife Cathy. Woody also succumbed to the disease, as most did, and still do.

Because Sheila and I were the only ones in our group with any background in science or biomedicine, it fell to us to scour the medical literature to try to identify some treatments that might offer a solution. We spent several hours a day on Pubmed, trying to learn more about the disease, and we started searching the NIH-sponsored site for new therapies undergoing clinical trials (www.clinicaltrials.gov ) to see if there might be any new trials that could help Terence. It’s a daunting and thankless task. Every clinical protocol has strict exclusion criteria, and if one has had certain prior treatments, a candidate may be disqualified for an experimental therapy even though it may seem promising. One becomes trapped in a vast decision-tree matrix; a decision to go with one clinical protocol often slams the door on others, due to the exclusion criteria. Every decision becomes life-or-death, and there is no way to determine which is which. It’s impossible to know if you are making the right decision or not. Or that’s how it feels. This was the dilemma we were in. In the end, given the outcome that we now know, none of the decisions that we made were the correct ones, the outcome would in all probability have been the same for Terence no matter what course we chose.

Sometime during this period, while Terence was shuttling back and forth to Honolulu for his treatments, I met some friends in California for a weekend. They had rented a beautiful condo and had what they said was a new LSD analog they wanted to share, which in retrospect I think was really just LSD. I was up for it. I was quite distressed about the situation with Terence, and I thought the experience might help me get some perspective on it.

The material we took was in a crystal form, in a tiny vial. We had no scale and had to “eyeball” the doses as best we could. However much I took, it was much more LSD than I had ever taken in my life, there was no doubt of that. It was one hell of a ride. The effects came on within minutes, and within minutes I was so out of it I was oblivious to everything except what was going on inside my head. And that was all about Terence and our shared dilemma. I saw the tumor as an evil black spider extending its lethal web through Terence’s brain; he was an insect futilely struggling in that web, desperately seeking an escape. A voice kept insisting, “The only way out is to go in.” I took that to mean there really was no escape, that death was the only escape. I confronted that idea with all the grief, anxiety, and fear that I’d been keeping bottled inside. I thought about Terence’s death, and what that would mean, and the aftermath, and the sadness and grieving that would inevitably follow. It was as if I had been granted an opportunity to experience all of that grief in advance, go through it then and there and get past it, in order to cleanse my system of all that negative energy and be ready for the ordeal that lay ahead.

Terence finished his radiation treatments in early August and settled in at home, waiting to see what would unfold. Klea and Finn spent a great deal of time with their father that summer, and indeed over the hard months after it, a crucial part of the story they alone can tell, as the most important people in Terence’s life. Various friends traveled to Hawaii to see him. Caitlin and I spent time with him, as did our Aunt Amelia. Terence grumbled about having “that old battle-ax” around, but there was no stopping her. Amelia could be as gruff and abrasive as Terence when she wanted to be. In the end I think he appreciated her effort. It could not have been easy for an eighty-six-year-old woman, but she insisted, as if to say: I’m here, I love you, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.

Shortly after Caitlin returned to the mainland, Luis Eduardo showed up. We were preparing to initiate the program of shamanic surgery I’d discussed with Terence in the hospital garden. Terence didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the idea. “What’s this all about?” he asked me. “What do you think is going to happen?” I told him I didn’t really know. At best, I said, we’d cure his cancer and he’d be OK. If not, I hoped he’d have an epiphany of some kind that would help him come to terms with the fact of his illness and the possibility of death. He was skeptical.

Over the next couple of weeks, the ayahuasqueros at least had occasion to take plenty of these medicines. We sang icaros , we blew mapacho , we sucked virotes , we massaged Terence’s head; we danced around and made the hypercarbolation scream. We told Amelia what we were doing, and she totally got it. In our sessions, we sat around a small fire in front of Terence’s deck, and when we weren’t shamanizing, we talked. Terence only took a small amount of psilocybin, and for him the effects were light and recreational. He was obviously enjoying himself, but our conversations had no depth; Terence described them as a mile wide and an inch deep. I didn’t know how to steer us in a more productive direction. Our recent tensions had not been entirely forgotten. My brother obviously distrusted me and held himself back.

August faded into September. Luis Eduardo returned to Finland, and I went home to Minnesota. Terence, who was still feeling pretty good, remained on the Big Island with Christy. The AllChemical Arts Conference took place in mid-September and by all accounts was a great success. His wider community was aware that the event was quite possibly his last major public appearance, and that put the focus even more on him. He gave some of his best talks and interviews during the conference, which I think marked the start of a gradual process of letting go, both for him and for his fans.

By late September matters were becoming urgent; the effects of Terence’s treatments with the gamma knife and the subsequent radiation therapy were beginning to wear off. The tumor’s growth had slowed for a short while, but now it had resumed. I continued to search the literature for a clinical trial that might prove to be the escape hatch we all were hoping for. Finally, after evaluating many clinical trials and consulting with Terence’s physicians and other experts, we found a clinical trial that seemed to hold promise. It was one of the early experiments in gene therapy, an industry-sponsored Phase I clinical study being conducted at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, home to one of the best neuro-oncology departments in the world. We were initially concerned because Terence’s oncologist in Honolulu had assessed his tumor as inoperable. But his surgeon in San Francisco was confident the tumor could be removed as the first step prior to the gene-therapy stage. It seemed like the closest thing to a magic bullet that we had found. It was our best and last hope.

Terence successfully completed the second phase of his treatment at UCSF today. He had a craniotomy, followed by additional gene therapy. The surgery was a success by all measures. According to the surgeon…all visible traces of the tumor have been removed. It will take some more time to assess whether the gene therapy has been effective, but even if it was not, Terence has benefitted from the surgery. He is now recovering on the Neuro ICU unit at the hospital.

As far as anyone can tell, he is the same old Terence: sense of humor fully intact, bemused perspective fully functional, and no obvious impairments of speech, cognition or movement. So, for now, it seems that an important phase of Terence’s treatment has been completed. With a bit of luck, the gene therapy will prove effective and may actually amount to a cure, although that is a word we do not use lightly around here. What is important, for now, is that these procedures have bought more time—possibly much more time—while not diminishing quality of life.

Following the operation, Terence and Christy remained in San Francisco, living in an apartment close to the UCSF Medical Center, kindly offered by a friend. This made it easier to check in for the close follow-up that the procedure required, and so far everything looked good. Terence seemed to be rallying a bit. The operation had gone as well as expected, and that alone gave us some hope. Now it was a matter of waiting to see if the gene therapy worked, which would be indicated if the tumor had stopped growing and was beginning to shrink. The next major checkup for Terence was scheduled for late January. He and Christy returned to the Big Island in late October.

During November and December, we were permitting ourselves to think that this high-tech approach just might have worked. The message of my LSD experience six months earlier came back to remind me that the only way out was to go in. Well, Terence’s doctors had gone in and excised the malignant spider that had taken up residence there. Now it only remained to see if, in fact, this procedure had created a way out.

After recovering from surgery, Terence felt better than he had in a while, but that respite didn’t last long. Soon after returning to Hawaii, he developed a great deal of pain in his left leg. His doctors thought that both his pain and loss of strength might have been related to his steroid medications, which can break down muscle tissue. Terence had been taking steroids since his initial diagnosis, and his doses had gone up following the operation. The doctors suggested that he gradually taper off the steroids, and by late December he had; but after a brief period when his symptoms seem to improve slightly, they got worse.

It was a dreary Christmas for all of us. Terence and Christy remained in seclusion on the Big Island, the situation becoming ever more dire. I was in Minnesota with my family, trying to pretend that we were celebrating a normal Christmas, but we all knew better. Minnesota was in the grip of its usual icy winter, and I became obsessed with keeping the fire going in the new woodstove we’d installed a few months earlier as our single hedge against Y2K. At least it was something I could do: keep my family warm in the face of winter and impending global disaster.

In a bizarre prefiguration of the events predicted for 2012, much of the world seemed on the verge of Y2K hysteria. The computer wonks were predicting the imminent collapse of civilization due to the so-called Millennium Bug: computer systems the world over would abruptly malfunction as their clocks switched over from 1999 to 2000. By convention, computerized calendrical systems used the last two digits of the year to program dates instead of all four digits. The fear was that these systems would mistake 2000 for 1900, and the entire global Internet would crash, triggering a new dark age as our short-lived digital age ended in chaos.

Terence and Christy returned to the Bay Area for his checkup in January. I was there as well, having put my work and other activities aside. They were planning to continue on from there to the Entheobotany Conference in Palenque in mid-February, but that was looking unlikely. Terence’s problems had worsened. An MRI during his checkup revealed that the tumor had metastasized. This was unexpected and disturbing; it is extremely rare for glioblastomas to spread beyond the site of initial growth. There was no way to determine if this was an unintended consequence of the gene therapy, but it may have been.

In any case, the doctors more or less threw up their hands. There was nothing more they could do, they said. They thanked Terence for making his contribution to science and sent him home. The tumor was now proliferating in critical areas close to the autonomic centers that regulate cardiac and respiratory functions. If he was “lucky”—the term sounded pretty hollow at this point—he would live six months. In all likelihood, his time on earth would be much shorter, closer to three or four months.

After that news, Palenque was out of the question. Terence had no energy and no longer any will to fight the thing. What he wanted was to go home to the Big Island, but even that simple wish could not be granted to him. Christy could not be expected to take care of him alone, in a remote place with no easy access to emergency care. She was willing to try, but Terence’s friends Jack and Ricci joined me in saying that wouldn’t work.

Jack and Ricci had a place in Marin, a nice suburban house they rented in San Rafael, overlooking an inlet of San Rafael Bay. They invited Terence and Christy to stay with them. It was there that Terence passed his final days. I respect Jack and Ricci for taking on a task that turned them into caregivers, guardians, and gatekeepers. They arranged for Terence to have access to hospice care if needed; they engaged a pain specialist to manage his pain medications as his condition worsened. They created and maintained a firewall to protect Terence from the many fans that, out of misguided love, were desperate to connect with him—and from several old girlfriends who wanted to reconnect. Betsy, another member of their circle, offered me the use of a studio with a spare bedroom in her house if I should need it—the first of many kindnesses she has extended to my family since then.

Terence was rapidly declining; within the space of a week he had lost the ability to walk with a cane and was confined to a wheelchair. About this time, Jack and Ricci arranged to have a farewell party for Terence. Some of his oldest and best friends were there, including Vanessa, who had played the role of the “responsible adult” at La Chorrera. Others from the early Berkeley days showed up, and Terence was clearly moved, as were we all. Everyone knew they were saying goodbye.

Throughout February and March, Terence continued to lose strength and energy. Klea, who had started her freshman year in the fall at UCLA, had transferred to UC Santa Cruz to be closer to her father. I returned to the Bay Area with my family in mid-March. Ralph Metzner had organized a conference entitled “Ayahuasca, Shamanism, and Spirituality,” sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies, and held at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. Metzner had just published and edited a collection of essays and scientific articles on ayahuasca, and the conference was in part a platform to promote the book (Metzner 1999). I spoke at the event, along with others in the Ayahuasca field, including my colleagues from the UDV study, Charlie Grob and Jace Callaway. Luis Eduardo was also there, as were Jeremy Narby and attorney Roy Haber, who was working to secure recognition for the Santo Daime under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was an excellent conference, one of the first on the topic in the Bay Area. Sheila had not seen Terence since before he’d been diagnosed, and Caitlin had not seen him since the previous summer in Hawaii.

We planned to go to Marin to see him after the conference, not exactly a joyful reunion, but an important one. The first day of the conference, March 17, was warm and sunny, and we were all standing around by the pool after breakfast, waiting for the program to start. Sheila, Cait, and I were talking to Luis Eduardo and Roy. I looked away for a minute and when I looked back, Sheila had disappeared; next thing I knew, she was emerging from the swimming pool, fully clothed and dripping wet, clutching a child to her chest. While the rest of us were standing around distracted in conversation, Cait had spotted a small child motionless at the bottom of the pool and had alerted Sheila. Sheila’s EMT training kicked in: she dove into the pool and rescued the little girl, laid her by the side of the pool, and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Luis Eduardo stepped in to help and found that she had a pulse, so Sheila could continue with her mouth-to-mouth. The rest of us stood by watching, stunned. After a few minutes, the girl coughed up some water, took a deep breath and let out a lusty cry. Sheila had saved her life! It turned out it was Roy’s daughter, at the time about five years old. Roy and his wife were deeply shaken, of course, and extremely grateful to Sheila. The paramedics took her to the hospital where she fully recovered. By the next day, she was at the conference, dancing around. That frightening moment created a bond between Sheila and Roy that has continued to this day.

Following the conference, Sheila, Cait, and I went with Luis Eduardo to Marin to see Terence. He was confined to his bed, and the encounter was difficult for all of us. What words can one find to speak to a dying man? Cait, eleven at the time, became upset as it dawned on her that she’d probably never see her uncle alive again. We all eventually confront the proof of life’s brevity in the face of someone dear to us. That was the lesson Cait was learning as her beloved uncle tried to wipe her tears and reassure her.

After spending a night or two in Marin at Betsy’s place, we flew back to Minnesota. A few days later, I returned to be with Terence. Time was growing short. When I got back to Marin on March 28, it was clear that things had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. There had been a traumatic event of some kind; it appeared to me that he’d suffered a stroke that had rendered him largely paralyzed and aphasic.

In my absence, other events had occurred, the consequences of which I would not fully grasp until later. It seemed there had been conversations with Terence, if that’s what you’d call such exchanges when the key person cannot speak, about changing his will. The changes involved the distribution of some of his properties, particularly his cherished library. At some point, one of Terence’s friends had visited his house on the Big Island and returned with a photographic inventory of some of Terence’s possessions—mostly art objects like his Tibetan thangkas. Apparently at Terence’s request, another friend had called in lawyers over the weekend to rewrite Terence’s will. I didn’t learn what the changes were until after Terence had died. I was suspicious and wondered why I had been excluded from these conversations. Just prior to my return to Minnesota, I had asked Terence to name me the executor of his will. He granted my request, but it turned out to be a burdensome responsibility, as I later found out.

During this period, I was staying at Betsy’s and spending every day with Terence, a vigil I shared with Klea and Finn. It’s not easy to be with someone who is dying, especially when they are unable to speak. The time passed slowly. My cousin Judy and her husband Laddie, in the area visiting their daughter, came by to pay their respects. In a moment I described earlier in the book, our Aunt Tress, whom Terence had been on the outs with since high school, phoned to offer some words of comfort. I spent long hours by Terence’s bedside, sometimes reading, sometimes sharing passages aloud, often just sitting in silence. I talked to Terence, trying to overcome my anguish, to say something meaningful. It was surprising how hard it was to get these simple words out: I love you. I forgive you. I ask that you forgive me. That was what I needed to say. There wasn’t much point in trying to say anything more than that. I’m pretty sure that he heard me, though he couldn’t respond.

I was not at Terence’s bedside when the end came. It happened at 2:15 a.m. on the third of April. His children and I had been with him the previous evening. Around ten or eleven we said goodnight, and Finn and I went to our lodgings at Betsy’s. Terence didn’t respond to our farewells, because he couldn’t. Christy was the only one with him at the end. Suddenly, he came fully awake, lifted himself up from the mattress, and tried to say something. His face was transfixed in an expression of ecstasy. Then, he settled back, let out a long sigh, and was gone. Christy walked to the window and looked out across the bay; the sky was cloudless and clear; it was the darkest hour. As she stood and watched, a shooting star flared and faded in the night. At least, she said this happened, and I believe her, because I want to believe her. I know it was Terry in his crystal ship, kicking it into warp drive, accelerating smoothly into hyperspace. Just like we always said it would be.

The news arrived the next morning when Christy came over to tell us. I actually heard it from Finn as I was descending the stairs from Betsy’s studio. When he told me, I let out an involuntary wail, an anguished cry like a wounded animal. I have never made a sound like that, before or since. I couldn’t have prevented it, even if I had wanted to. Something reached into me at that moment and tore out a piece of my soul. After that, I was just stunned. We went back to the house together. It was like being in a dream; there was a strange, muffled quality to external sounds, almost like my head was wrapped in gauze. We walked in and there was Terence, on his bed in his room. His face expressed ecstasy and peace. My beautiful brother, my mentor and tormentor, was gone.