Auf wiedersehen to an unreformed hippie
One of our oldest friends in our little town in the Rheinland just died.
She was from the south of Germany, but had settled here in the Rheinland decades ago. Her only son was in our elder daughter's class at the Anne Frank elementary school here in our town. She had been to India, spent time with a yogi, the whole sixties bit. To this day, I couldn't tell you what she did for a living. I never really knew.
She was always fun, although she chain smoked and knew I couldn't stand it. She always used to say, "so what about cancer? Anybody can get cancer!" She wasn't prepared to be one the "anybody." When she was diagnosed with cancer the first time, she seemed to respond to the treatment, and was snapping back. But she couldn't kick the cigarettes, no matter what the doctors told her about the consequences, and the cancer came back with a vengeance before her recovery was complete. My wife last saw her here in town about 3 weeks ago, as usual at her favorite café with some friends, although by now in a wheel chair, too weak to get around on her own any longer.
She probably went listening to Ravi Shankar and reading a translation of Allen Ginsburg.
Sic transit gloria mundi. We've had enough of this, but I guess it's our generation's turn to start dying off. Both of my parents and all of their siblings had cancer, so with me it's not "if," but "when." My wife and her brother already had it. She survived, He did not.
Still, we won't go without a fight. Things to do, places to go. We lost a friend. We'll celebrate and remember her life, because that's what she would have wanted.
"No llores porque ya se terminó... sonríe, porque sucedió" (Don't cry because it's over....smile because it happened)--Gabriel García Márquez
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now and have lost so many...both parents, all aunts and uncles, my sister, friends... It's the toughest part of getting older, so far. Sorry for your loss, we need us aging hippies around as long as possible 
I freaked my dad out when I said I'd rather leave forever for Sweden than go to Vietnam (I was draftable in the late 60s and early 70s). A friend of mine got inducted, but volunteered for the Air Force, had bad eyesight, and told them he spoke German and Russian. They sent him to spy school in Syracuse, NY and then posted him in West Berlin for two years listening in on the Soviet Air Force ("air farce."
Best gig he ever had, a 2 year vacation, he said. Probably what I would have done, but they never got me. I DID learn to speak Swedish just in case (along with Russian and German, also just in case)!
