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get away from a meeting. Got into a checker session at the Y resulting in Jim and Johnnie exchanging more or less continuous razzing on their respective checker ability for the rest of the day. Got up to see Jim about 3 PM. Jim was up and dressed with a light bathrobe over his clothes; he looks more like a shadow of his former husky self than before his operation - must have lost seventy pounds or more, and white as a ghost. But Jim is very cheerful, discussed all our work on 0361-0366 with apparent interest and if one had one's eyes closed, could imagine being right in Jim's office with nothing unusual present. Everyone seems to think Jim doesn't realize his trouble which they say is cancer of the large intestine, stomach and liver plus a tumor behind the stomach. They didn't do a thing to him - there was no use - simply closed him up again and gave him a few months. It seems criminal that doctors can't end someone like that so he never comes out of the anesthetic, saving him agony of mind and body. As I sat there trying to act normal and talk cheerfully, I kept looking at Jim's baby chair in one corner of the room and then back to Jim in the other - the beginning and the end all there so close together. Jim got up & took us to the door, shook hands smiled as we walked down the hall, and I wondered if perhaps that would be the last time I'd ever see him. His sweet old "ma" made it doubly pathetic. It's funny how life is; I felt genuinely sad at Jims. But we dropped into Schraffts in New Rochelle for a drink and after three Scotch & sodas, we were all on high again, wound up at Johnnies for some horseshoes, dinner at Schraffts and back on the subway after just missing our New Haven train by a hair. Packed in a hurry & after a grand rush found the
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Reviewed