Back in the late fall, I started going to a yoga class one evening a week. I did it in part be­cause I thought it might do me some good and in part be­cause I have known the instructor since she was in high school and dated my younger son. Either reason, yoga was a whole new experience for me.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Let me clarify what kind of yoga class this is. This is not “hot yoga.” Or even “tepid yoga.” Our instructor calls it “relaxation yoga.” I call it yoga for the aged and decrepit. As the second oldest participant in the class – my life­long friend Cindy being the oldest by a mere 13 months – I fall squarely in the “aged” category and often in the “decrepit” one as well.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I have very recently started doing a shorter yoga session, 30 minutes, at home to supplement the class, which is an hour long. I am still getting the hang of doing it on my own, especially when it comes to keeping my thoughts focused.

Breathe in, breathe out.

A recent home yoga session was complicated by the phone call I received a few hours earlier. A longtime colleague / friend had just died from esophageal cancer some four years after being first diagnosed and treated, the last two of those after it recurred. Many of us in the local community knew death was imminent, but it was still hard news to hear. The friend calling me had to stop mid-sentence and take a deep breath to steady himself.

Breathe in, breathe out.

So when I rolled my mat out on the living room carpet and started to move into a simple pose (well, they’re all simple), I realized my thoughts were not centered at all on yoga or mindfulness. They were on my dead friend and our last conversation about his hoping to live long enough to see his granddaughter’s first birth­day in February.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I yanked my thoughts back. Okay, mountain pose and ... scrape the sky and ...

Breathe in, breathe out.

I thought of this friend and the conversations we’d had in the courthouse, some­times in the halls and some­times in the parking lot, about cancer and treatment decisions. About living life to the fullest in our own particular ways, not in ways that others expected. About the beautiful blue of the autumn sky overhead.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I moved into some of the floor poses: twists, cat / cow, modified pigeon. I tried hard to think of only my breathing, of encouraging my muscles and mind to relax. But my thoughts kept edging off. This is the second friend I – we – have lost to cancer in the last four months. Why them? Why not me?

Breathe in, breathe out.

I went into the child pose several times to regain my concentration. Come on, April. I repeated some poses, slowed down my breathing. Somehow I managed to make it through the 30 minutes. Not easy.

Breathe in, breathe out.

We always end our yoga class with the shavasana pose. To the uninitiated, shavasana is the corpse pose: supine on the yoga mat, hand at the side, relaxed. I do the same at home when I get done. Corpse pose.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Soon the timer on my phone went off and I brought the yoga session to an end. Usually I come out of shavasana slowly, “waking” myself to the world again. This time I rolled out of it and back onto my feet quickly. I was grateful to be back among the living. I was thinking of those friends who no longer are. All I could feel was my gratitude for the time we did have together in this world.

Breathe in, breathe out.