Gail MacMillan

When I was diagnosed back in 2009, Gail was working at an international school in Thailand. Her career had long been as a global nomad, moving from one international school to another on planet Earth. There's a whole tribe of people who do that, and they all know each other and share an allergy to being back here for too long. They get itchy if they stay in any one country too long, but especially itchy back here.

"We overlapped at the school in Bangkok, but then they moved onto Kuala Lumpur and I went to Shanghai. We kept in touch when I was in Helsinki and they were in Oman, but we didn't meet up again until we were both in Vienna." That's how their conversations go.

Gail told tales of the Shangri-La, while we're squishing the globe, that can be found on the coast of Morocco, and you'd feel like you were really missing out. She and her teacher friends lived in villas on the pristine Moroccan beach, eating sliced papaya and reading the book section of the New York Times. Why aren't we living in Morocco? I'd think. 

A deeply empathic person, Gail was shocked when I got cancer. Laura and I both recall her alarm, and the umbrage she felt on my behalf. So deep was her empathy that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer a month later, I felt like she really shouldn't have. She took her own diagnosis in smoother stride, and felt confident that a single mastectomy, chemo, and radiation would beat back the cancer. She moved ahead with plans to go back to a school she loved in Vienna, and for weeks did radiation treatments there before the school day began. 

Back during chemo, Gail and I skyped a lot. She was in excellent hands in Thailand (where her principal and friends would spend the night in the hospital with her; it's much more of a it-takes-a-village-to-have-surgery-and-chemo affair there), and I was sitting at the kitchen table in Farmington. We went bald together, and we'd both go up close to the camera to show just how far gone our eyelashes were. She was the person I could talk to about symptoms that are so unsavory I didn't even put them on the blog. And that's saying something.

Gail developed a cough last summer, not yet a year past radiation. Just a little cough, just a little sound, like "heh" sprinkled between her words. But it wouldn't go away. She left her beloved school in Vienna and went back into immediate treatment at Dana Farber. But a cellular stampede was trampling her body, and they couldn't stop it. The cough, a growing rumble from the stampede, broke her increasingly fragile ribs. 

Still, she felt sure she had another couple of years with her body, and was resigned enough about being permanently bald to have invested, just a couple of weeks ago, in a wig. Scarves are fine for a few months, but they are a short-term situation, like when you slip on a bathrobe to get the paper on the driveway. The wig was Gail's way of saying, "Might as well get dressed."

Not much more than a week ago, Gail was out and about, driving around, eating around, laughing around, hanging around with friends. Though weakened from chemo, she'd usually bounce back after a few days and her life went on. Then, this past infusion, she didn't bounce. 

We got a call from a friend of hers once Gail was settled in the hospital. No need to visit; Gail just wanted you to know she's kind of having a hard time, this friend said. Should we go see her? we wondered. Or should we wait until she's up for a visit. 

We called the next morning to see how the night had gone. But there had been no night for Gail, and there would be no more days.

I don't believe in a heaven, but I wish I did. I would picture Gail there, and she would be forever well and whole and free of pain. There would be papaya, deep blue waves crashing on a pristine beach, and the book section of the New York Times.