The sad news has come. Someone I loved has died.

I had planned to post about my recently completed flight attendant training this week. To offer up my insights, my likes and dislikes, to take a shot at Corporate America and the declining standards under the capitalist race to the bottom (among other, more positive remarks). But things have changed. It doesn’t feel so pressing, anymore. Feels weird, if I’m honest, to talk about something like hospitality, when something serious, tangible, gut-wrenching is happening.

*Has happened. It doesn’t quite feel real yet, to switch from present to past tense.

I’m not ready to talk in depth about my friend, gone too soon. But what I do want to say, loudly, clearly, and with all the force in my being is this:

Do the thing.

Make it happen.

Spend the money.

Call out of work.

Show up.

I made a last-minute decision to journey to the UK, with just one day free, before a 9-day stint in Florida for a mandatory work training. It wasn’t convenient or easy, but the feeling nagged at me— ‘You must go.’ It was 20 hours of flying and 8 hours in airports in a matter of three days. It was little sleep and the stress of getting to where I needed to be, on time. It would have been easier to go later, on April 8, when I didn’t have so much going on, could take a few days off. But in these situations, you never know how much time is left. So, you make a judgement call.

It was 5 hours of sitting in a hospital room with someone I loved once, hated once, and have always cared for deeply. It was redemption.

And when I got the news, on Wednesday, April 3, that he had passed, it was validation of the decision I’d made. It was “Thank god I went when I did.”

This post is a little bit about my whirlwind trip to spend 24 hours in the UK saying goodbye. And more than that, it is an impassioned plea to trust your gut. To do what you need to do, to show up.

The Trip

I departed Boston at 6pm, on an overnight flight to London. I hopped a train to the next terminal, because Heathrow is enormous, then boarded my flight to Manchester, arriving at 9:30 in the morning. I booked a hotel from the bag claim area, while waiting for my suitcase, choosing a place based on where I could check in early.

I gathered my million-pound bag, packed for twelve days away, and went outside to find my Uber driver to take me to the hotel. I had to pay thirty pounds to check in early, but it was well worth it to be able to catch a little sleep before seeing my friend. I didn’t know what condition he’d be in when I arrived, and I thought being rested might just help my emotional state and the quality of our visit. I got to the hospital at 3pm, not knowing what to expect. I braced myself, while walking through the doors, the glass-covered corridor to his wing, a place so familiar it was almost comforting, and hoped for the best.

The visit

The visit was just what it should have been. We didn’t cry or rehash the past. Instead, we caught up. We talked about his numerous, snowballing health ailments, about my upcoming training, about family. I steered clear of topics I thought would upset him and left myself open to taking the encounter as it came. He was sick, to be sure. I had cried on my way to the airport the day before, the two-hour drive giving me the downtime I needed to let my brain trace circles around what was really going on. What must it feel like? To know you’re going to die? To feel it lapping at your ankles, unrelenting, despite the treatments, and your age, and all the people around the world praying for a miracle. “He must be so scared,” I thought, aloud, in my car, through tears.

When I sat with him in the hospital for our final goodbye, he was in too much discomfort to be afraid. The body comes first. Our physical needs are so palpable, it is hard for us to think beyond them. He didn’t cry or bemoan the situation, though I think I might have if the roles were reversed.

We played quiz games. High fived one another after a particularly successful round—in science, of all things. We reminisced about the pub quiz we nearly won in The Cotswolds in December. And by ‘nearly won’, I mean didn’t lose. The low-ceilinged pub, full of warm light and chatty locals, where they called me ‘The American’ and the bartender helped us with the picture round (a fill-in map of the town, impossible for outsiders to know) will be one of our last happy memories. On the walk home through the pitch dark, where our breath crystalizing in the air was the only discernible landmark, he’d said to me: “We’ve always been a good team, when we work together.”

There are a million earlier memories we could have talked of. Sweeter ones, without the sour sting of Cancer lingering on our tongues. But we didn’t rehash the past. It’s all there, safely in my memories, in my iCloud photos. I wasn’t there to love him, not like I used to anyway. I was there for support, for forgiveness, for one last time to let him know: “I’ve got you.”