Words are too weak to tell about this

She is dying. My friend is dying. That is what I learned yesterday when her son called me.I am stunned by this news.
Is it strange that I had been thinking about her? Just yesterday morning I looked again at my poem about her, and I wrote about her on April 1st, that silly April Fool's joke. Then, and I wasn't looking for it, I found what I wrote about her, December 2010.

"I don't have it," she told me. "I don't have anything like it."

That's what this latest doctor told her, and she has been to "so many" doctors. "I just have to take this one little white pill a day, and everything will be fine. Things are coming back. I'm so much better; the paranoia is gone." 

And so on.

I do hear improvement. When she called me last summer--and I'm not sure she remembers that--she felt like a prisoner in her own house, didn't know her husband, was afraid of him, didn't know what she had done, thought it must have been something terrible, thought I was the one person in this world she could trust to be her friend. Beyond that, and all this was by her own report, she couldn't remember things, couldn't say the words she wanted, was "sick and tired of this." 

Repeat and repeat. And not all of it made sense.  

Ok, then what is it?

Clearly, she did not know the truth. Neither did I, but here's the thing. If we "know" the truth we don't always believe it. At that point I was in early denial, thinking it was amnesia. She had fallen and cracked open her head, you know. Many stitches required to sew it back together. She could tell me about it.

And later, I realized just today, even with all we know of Alzheimer's, even when my visits with her showed that she really had it, I kept the thought somewhere in my brain that my next visit would find her improved, getting better.

Classic denial. Right?

Back to my original question. Is it strange that I was thinking about her? Maybe. Maybe not. Who can say about these things?

One thing I know. Now, suddenly, and it is sudden, on a rainy April 2, 2014, she has less than a week to live. I always thought I would die before her. I am older. But no.

I will go to see her tomorrow and hope she will still be there. She will not know me, will most likely be asleep. I don't care. I want to see her. Her son says my visit will mean a lot to his dad. But I'm not going for his dad.