Dying Friend

This unnamed woman is the friend whom the narrator visits in the hospital. Her request to the narrator to "tell me things I won't mind forgetting," sets the story in motion. The woman was the narrator's best friend, but her feeling of betrayal is revealed when she introduces the narrator to her nurse as "the Best Friend." The woman is making a concerted effort to deal with her mortality, illustrated by her attempt to engage her friend in a conversation about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's theory of the psychology of death. Like the narrator, she also uses ironic humor to help defuse the tension of their meeting, like when she wraps a telephone cord around her neck and proclaims it "the end o' the line." However, when her wish that her friend spend the night is rebuffed, the woman is so overwhelmed by the act of abandonment that she...