A late story about Jim:

Several days before he died, I received an e-mail from him asking me to phone. I did not know he had been ill (he was never the kind to complain about himself) and when I reached him, he told me that he had been in the hospital for the past month.

He said that he had initially been diagnosed with cancer but that day his doctor told him that he had "cured himself" and the diagnosis had been wrong -- that he had been suffering from mono, but it had run its course and he would be discharged the next day.

When his sister told me a few days later that Jim was dying and has been moved to hospice, I was shocked. I couldn't imagine what had happened. Had the doctor lied to him to raise his morale? Had he been hallucinating? (His voice sounded strong and as we talked about various things he seemed completely coherent.)

I may be wrong, of course, but I believe that he asked me to call simply because he wanted to speak with me one last time and he made up the story about his cure simply because he neither wanted me to worry about him nor did he want any sympathy.