Kerry was seriously ill: his primary diagnosis was Wegener's granulomatosis (a fatal auto-immune disease); secondary diagnoses included chronic renal failure; congestive heart failure; endocarditis; and pneumonia. Troubling symptoms were shortness of breath; difficulty urinating and defecating, sore mouth/thrush; bilateral conjunctivitis; dry, cracked skin with bleeding sores all over his skin.

He gave me a phone number to call, so that when I got to the Atlanta airport his ex-wife Cara or his son Kreg could come pick me up .

It was intense. That number was Cara's work number. I talked to her too but I didn't think to verify the phone number with her. The last plane left at 7:00 P.M. and I barely made it. When I reached the Atlanta airport, I kept calling that number, but after three hours of reaching the same machine, finally some beautiful Discordians who did not know me drove about 35 miles out of their way to the airport at midnite & took me home with them.

Meanwhile, Cara had taken him to another hospital emergency room, and they remained there from 9:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. All they did to treat him was to catherize him (he could neither urinate nor defecate) and refer him back to the hospital that had discharged him. Cara took Kerry there (after being up all night) and they yanked the catheter, causing bleeding, but they would not admit him. All this time I was at the Discordians' place and could not find out anything because nobody was getting the messages I was leaving on the work phone. They did not know where I was. I did not know where they were. [HAIL ERIS!]

Finally the next day they dialyzed Kerry, and I took the train into town & waited near the dialysis center and Cara picked him up and then picked me up and took the two of us out to his place and left us there.

I spent three day/nites alone with Kerry in his place - a tiny bare room in a bizarre old unheated house on a wooded hillside with a waterfall and a stream in back. He had two space heaters but he left his door open so his ten cats could come & go.

There was a phone but it was a bootleg party line with some business and you could only call out in the middle of the night or some time when you know the business was not going to pick up the phone -- and nobody could call you there.

He was discharged from the hospital by a substitute doctor after some ill-defined dispute at 3:00 a.m. Christmas morning; the only reason he wasn't put out in the street without a ride was because a sympathetic nurse ignored doctor's orders and allowed him to sleep through the night on a stretcher in the hall. His real doctor was on holiday.

Once I was able to talk to him, he minimized his condition. He explained that when he said for me to "get here today," he meant that he'd probably be going back to the hospital soon and I wouldn't be able to visit him freely. And his answer to my question about dying, "What do you think?" was meant to be ironic.

Kerry complained that I was overreacting, and that nobody appreciated his sense of humor. Kreg had told him "You're going to have to start taking this SERIOUSLY!" He grumbled and growled about how he never wanted to see his son's face again because he never appreciated his jokes. Fortunately, his irritability improved before he spoke any harsh words.

He wouldn't even let me put lotion on his cracked & bleeding back that was itching like crazy. I slept in the same bed with him and he didn't want me to touch him even in his sleep. The first night he stayed up all night pacing and raving. I wept quite a lot. The second and third nights I gave him 1 mg of my own Xanax. He tolerated it fine and we both got a good rest .

I had a couple of fights with him over the fact he wouldn't care for himself or allow any of the people who loved him to care for him; he put the damn cats ahead of everything including himself.

While I was there, I saw the cats shit and piss and throw up on the floor, and one even brought in a BIG NASTY RAT!!!! Kerry was nonplused, as he picked vermin off the animals and squished them.

The fourth day I took him on a taxi-train-bus-transfer journey into what he called "enemy territory" -- Cobb County -- so he could meet the Discordians and see his own website for the first time.

He lives about a half-mile mile out this unpaved lane. You have to walk uphill to the real road, then another quarter-mile to the bus stop. There was ice on that rocky, rough road. His lungs were full. Coughing and hacking, he couldn't walk more than three or four steps without having to pause and rest. Still, he refused to let me call a taxi! Finally, I showed him my watch, that we had already missed the bus for the second time since starting our journey, so grudgingly he allowed me to turn him around and head back to the house and call a taxi to take us to the train station.

While we waited for the taxi I sat with Molly purring on my lap as the radio played Beethoven's Ninth. The Ode to Joy never hung so bittersweet in the air.

I kept crying the whole time. Tears were just flowing.

Standing in the wind waiting for a transfer, he turned to me and said, "Either this bus is going to come or I'm going to die of pneumonia." I tried to get him to turn around & go back to his place, and get back in bed, but he turned fierce and abusive.

"This was a harebrained goddamned idea to come out here."

"You're right. It's my fault. Please, let's just go back."

"NO! After we came this far?"

So we continued our quixotic voyage.

We got on the bus and I sat one seat away from him with my bag between us. I just withdrew from him.

Uncharacteristically, he reached towards me, touched my arm and smiled.

I was wary. "Are you mad at me?"

"No."

"You're not?"

"Of course not! Why should I be?"

So I scooted over and sat right next to him and then when he began to drowse off, I put my arm around his shoulders to steady him as the bus swayed and swerved along. He felt so frail, as if he had puffed up with anger and then shriveled up into his pain.

At one point, he turned to me and said, "I think I really am dying this time."

"Maybe you'll get better."

After we got there it really turned out well. There were three Discordians who lived there, and when Kerry and I arrived, we made five.

We bundled him in quilts and ensconced him on a folded-out futon in the middle of the room, and he dozed off for awhile. We brewed him some mouth-soothing slippery elm herb tea. At first I held the cup for him to drink it, but after that he perked up. After a second cup he was able to have an oven-fresh biscuit and some cheese and we all had a mighty fine time.

One by one, Discordians arrived bringing their Principias to be autographed and to meet the author. One -- Mister Antithesis -- posed with him proudly displaying the tattoo on his arm of the Golden Kallisti Apple with the Sacred Chao.

One Discordian named Frater Flatulus Gelatinus kept in touch by phone... while posting emails and bulletins to alt.discordia. When we finally got Kerry up and online, Flat convened a Discordian chat room session and Kerry got to participate in his first (and only) chat session. We read the questions out loud to him and as he said his answers we keyed them in for him.

He really rallied during that hour or so there. He was lucid and funny with flashes of outrageous brilliance and beauty. He was as gracious and charming as he could be at his best.

We spent the night there together on that futon that night with the help of another round of Xanax and the next day a Discordian grant paid for a taxi direct to dialysis. I went with him and waited four hours lurking around various spots trying to stay warm.

After Kerry got out of dialysis he was crankier than ever and we had a big fight because I told him the Discordians had contributed $20, enough to pay for a taxi home from dialysis. "Thank you," he said, for the money, and then said he was going to take the bus and walk anyway because he needed to "buy some stuff" and he had no money. I know EXACTLY what he was going to buy. Cat food.

I had arranged for him to go to a professor's apartment and stay there until Cara could get Kreg's car and drive him home. Oh, that pissed him off something terrible, and he was blasting away at me, her, him and all humankind.

He said he would be suicidal if he didn't have those cats. It was me that gave him the first one -- Molly, MY cat, who I couldn't keep because of my fugitive lifestyle. He shaped his life around caring for her and then all the other cats that came around. His feline entourage.

I had offered to house and care for him and so had several other people, but nobody would take in all those cats.

He said sick people who have pets get better and old people live longer. He just didn't care at all for his own physical self, nor for all the people who loved him, nor for the creative genius within him. The drafty room, the vermin, the allergens, the careless depositing of animal wastes... this could not be good for his physical health. But their companionship was central to his mental health.

I asked him, "if you really are dying, what do you want to take care of before you go?" And he said, "I just want to be sure my cats are taken care of."

"How about your writing? Your artwork? Your works in progress?"

"Oh I don't care about any of that stuff."

I asked him if he would like me to be his literary executor, and he said he would, so I handwrote up a statement to that effect, and when I came to the part about the beneficiary -- "Who would that be -- Kreg? Or Cara?"

"No. If anything you publish by me ever makes any money I just want it to go to my cats."

I told him I was crying so much because the Death Machine had taken Joe O'Dell away from me and I couldn't even say goodbye, and I was afraid that would happen with him too.

"Yeah, I know how you feel," he sympathized. "That was how I felt when that dog killed Billy...." and he went on and on and on and ON! about what a GREAT caold Billy was.... and you have to understand I've been listening to this cat nonsense for about a hundred hours straight by this time, and I just said, "Yeah, well, you know what? I'm GLAD Billy's gone, because maybe now you'll be able to notice the PEOPLE AROUND YOU who LOVE YOU!" (Hint, hint! HELLO?)

Of course I knew he was dying and he was frightened and hurting. But I was hurting too! And finally I just blurted out: "OK, FINE! Just go on & DIE, then, dammit, if that's what you want! You just walk down that damn icy road. And when you slip or twist your ankle and you're laying there freezing to death because nobody is gonna go that way for DAYS, you remember ME, you remember I'm the one that got you the damn money to take a taxi and you told me NO!"

"I'm not going to slip. I have good shoes. Exercise is good for kidney patients."

"I just don't want to leave you this way, Kerry."

"Then come spend the night with me again."

"No. I'm exhausted. It's freezing. I don't do weather. And I don't do walking. It costs $10 to get down there from the train station and another $10 to get back, and I already ran out of my own money and their money too."

"Well, all right, then." And he turned away.

"Kerry?"

He stopped.

"Goodbye?"

"Goodbye."

And he just turned and walked away.

I stood there in the wind and the snow and sobbed openly like a little child watching him walk out of my life. Aw SHIT. It can't go like that.

I yelled, "Kerry!" and "KERRY!" but he kept walking. So I started running, but he was walking so slow I caught up just walking and just slipped up next to him and put my arm through his without a word.

Without looking up, he said "You wanna come have a cup of coffee with me?"

(Crying so hard I can't speak) "Nn-hn."

"It's really good cappucino... they've got a machine at this Texaco up here..... you'll like it...."

And I just held his arm and struggled to compose myself as we walked to the Texaco. While we stood there in the Texaco and drank cappucino, our talk of death and separation was subdued. I told him I was sorry I yelled at him, I was just afraid I'd never see him again.

After we finished the cappucino we walked to the Midtown station in silence, then stopped in front. "I just want you to know I love you, Kerry."

"You too," he said with a slight rueful smile. He leaned towards me and we touched foreheads as we looked into each other's eyes. There was one last long hug. Then I went north and Kerry went south.