An Eight Week Friendship, A Lifetime Lesson

A little more than two months ago, I had the opportunity to interview a woman who embodied grace in the face of extraordinary adversity. She lived with long-term disability and illness, bound to a wheelchair, yet remained deeply relevant, intellectually vibrant, and a living example of love in action. She passed today.

Her name was Marilyn Murray Willison.

Marilyn was an international journalist, a syndicated columnist, and an eight-time author of award-winning books on a wide range of topics. I had first met her three years earlier—entirely by chance—when I was in Florida and decided, on a whim, to attend a lunchtime lecture at the Kravis Center. I arrived late, scanned the ballroom, and noticed a nearly empty table with a woman in a wheelchair and her companion.

I chose that table.

It’s striking how often people see a wheelchair and quietly turn away, as if sitting beside it might come with discomfort, inconvenience, or something contagious. That simple decision led to a conversation that ranged from bee venom therapy—which had kept Marilyn alive for years—to women’s empowerment, writing, and life itself.

We had a brief follow-up visit at her home, where she gifted me her bee lotion and I brought what sunshine I could. Then, as life tends to do, we lost touch for three years.

When I contacted Marilyn a few months ago to invite her to participate in the Aging With Purpose Initiative, she was immediately open. Her only hesitation was her health. It had declined significantly, and she wasn’t sure she had the stamina for a forty-minute interview. She canceled twice, worried about how she might look. I assured her it would simply be a conversation between friends—and that if she didn’t like the final product, it wouldn’t be shared.

The interview was extraordinary.

As a seasoned journalist and celebrity interviewer, Marilyn instinctively guided the conversation wherever it needed to go. She made every important point—not didactically or preachily, but through lived experience. By the end, we were both in tears. In just forty minutes, I saw the soul of someone who had endured more than forty years of physical pain, emotional loss, and profound limitation—and yet remained fully alive.

We also realized something else: we had one of those rare connections that feel timeless, as if you’ve known each other forever. We simply got each other.

After that, I began visiting her almost daily. Marilyn once shared that every family has an “engine,” and in hers, that engine was productivity. Coincidentally, that was true of my family as well. So our visits became productive in the truest sense—ordering supplies, adjusting pillows, addressing immediate needs. I shared my initiative and my writing with her.

The next day, she handed me pages covered in red ink.

“You have a book here,” she said, “but not without a lot of work. Let’s get going.”

It became a race against time.

For several weeks, morphine kept her pain just manageable enough for us to continue our conversations—about books, world events, writing, and faith. No matter how much pain she was in, Marilyn was always fully present, focused on whoever was with her.

I came to love her in a very short time.

Perhaps it was because our conversations were never superficial. Perhaps it was because we both understood there was a deadline looming. One day, when a friend stopped by, Marilyn said, “I’m sorry—I can’t visit today. We’re on deadline.” And sometimes, when she was up for it, we debated God—everything from pronouns to how divinity operates in the world.

Marilyn belonged to a lifelong group called “The Catholic Girls Sorority,” formed during her Catholic school days. Soon, we created an offshoot of our own: “The Catholic Girls Writing Club.” One day, I arrived to find she had written an essay about dining with Queen Elizabeth and wanted my feedback. She also had an idea for a book about a reverse bucket list—revisiting the high points of a life already lived.

Then came the day when the pain became unbearable.

She weighed perhaps fifty pounds. Her body was nearly immobile except for her left arm. Hospice was visiting her at home, but it was clearly not enough. I gently suggested it might be time to move to an inpatient hospice facility. She agreed.

During the four excruciating hours it took to arrange the transfer, Marilyn said through the pain, “We need to distract ourselves. Let’s talk about Greenland.”

Somehow, she was fully aware of current events and ready to discuss geopolitics. We talked until hospice triage arrived and she was transferred.

At the hospice center, she slept most of the time, surrounded by soft white sheets, sunlight, and devoted caregivers. The last time I saw her, she woke long enough for me to hold the phone to her ear while a dear friend told her there would be a scholarship established in her name at UCLA, her alma mater.

“That would make me very happy,” she said.

During those weeks, a friend questioned my intense focus on a woman I had known only eight weeks. Why insert myself so fully when others had known her longer?

Here’s my answer: I believe one of the most important things in life is relationship—and adding something of service to the world. Marilyn’s father used to say, “No matter what, you can always do something productive for someone beyond yourself.” I did my best to honor that belief, always checking boundaries and stepping back when her healthcare proxy took over. Her answer to my daily “How are you?” with “Better now that you are here”, meant to me that the visits mattered to her. This was never about me.

This eight-week friendship changed me, and I’m still trying to understand why.

Was it because I heard a call and said yes, even though it wasn’t on my carefully managed calendar? Was it the joy of a friendship that leapt immediately into depth and meaning? Was it the poignancy of racing against time?

All I know is this: had I not said yes, I would have missed something beautiful, meaningful—and, I hope, a small contribution to the world.

And that, to me, is reason enough to say yes.