When a man knows he’s to be hanged, it concentrates his mind wonderfully

They both knew he was dying, faster each day, and revealing the never-told was his way to distract the pain and dodge the terror of his cancer. His daughter escaped with him, and when the old man realized they were both forgetting, new tales emerged. Bathed in the speckled shade of the cushy lawn chair with legs extended and arms crossed in front, he’d gaze up at the conjured scenes, his crystal eyes darting about as from a theatre’s front row. There was no order to it—a naval yarn, then a childhood escapade followed by something from the political times. One story would remind him of the next, and a string would come. The narrative matched his mood and sometimes the sky: cheerful and nostalgic for the most part, but sullen and woeful when the pain went raw. Terse and unadorned, the dark stories frightened his daughter, but he refused the narcotic till the telling was done. – page 2

“When a man knows he’s to be hanged, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” So quipped the old-world word wizard, Samuel Johnson. Often, and in like fashion, when death’s specter knocks at one’s door cloaked in disease or old age, a soul-searching melancholy follows, accompanied by anecdotes extracted from a lifetime about to end. Neuroscience informs us that memories are by nature imperfect, and if from distant times prone to subconscious edits, but such matters little to the audience of those narratives who correctly regards them as a last, long goodbye.

So it goes with our protagonist, John Shea, the Commander, for six decades a charismatic and esteemed figure among his peers and those he led, his world-wide stage now reduced to a worn path in the carpet leading from his hospital bed to the sliding doors of a garden patio. It’s there where his tales of adventure, mystery, love, and betrayal are disclosed, well spiced with irony, humor, and always, surprise. Surreptitiously recorded by his daughter who came to help for a few days but stayed for his end, they’re yours for the listening.