They collect a number of occasions per week within the parking zone of a Vons grocery store in Mar Vista, and no topic is off-limits. Not even the grim medical prognosis for 70-year-old David Mays, one of many founding members of the espresso klatch.
“It’s one in every of our main matters of dialog,” mentioned Paul Morgan, 45, a klatch common.
Mays is a most cancers survivor with a full bundle of maladies, together with diabetes, a faltering coronary heart and failing kidneys. However since I met him virtually two years in the past, he has instructed me repeatedly that he doesn’t need dialysis remedy, though it’d prolong his life.
“I get it, as a result of it’s a number of hours out of your day,” mentioned Morgan, a schoolteacher who lives close by. “Folks suppose you go in for dialysis for quarter-hour earlier than you go straight to work. However actually, it’s a part-time job.”
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Instances columnist since 2001. He has gained greater than a dozen nationwide journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
His remedy would require that he go to a dialysis heart 3 times per week, for 4 hours every time, Mays mentioned.
“For the remainder of my life.”
“I don’t suppose I might do it,” mentioned klatcher Package Bradley, 70, who lives in a van close to the grocery store together with his canine, Lea.
I met Mays in October 2023, when he was dwelling in his Chevy Malibu in a downtown storage that was a part of the Secure Parking L.A. program. Mays later moved into an condominium in East Hollywood and nonetheless lives there, however his well being has continued to deteriorate.
“He’s Stage 5,” mentioned Dr. Thet Thet Aung, Mays’ nephrologist at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles.
David Mays, heart, enjoys a morning get-together with Paul Morgan, left, and Package Bradley in a Vons parking zone in West Los Angeles on June 25, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
For such sufferers, Aung mentioned, dying may be imminent. She instructed me she’s had many conversations with Mays about his remedy choices, together with dialysis in a clinic or self-administered at dwelling. However not everybody does properly on dialysis, she added, and when a affected person makes an knowledgeable selection, “we respect their needs.”
Mays has a refreshingly wholesome angle about mortality. Multibillion-dollar industries cater to those that need to look youthful and dwell longer, and about 25% of Medicare’s large outlay is spent on sufferers within the final yr of life, a lot of whom select life-extending medical procedures.
Mays, within the time I’ve recognized him, has been real looking moderately than fatalistic. He has instructed me he doesn’t suppose bravery, religion or spirituality has something to do together with his need to let nature take its course.
“It transcends these issues,” he mentioned.
He’s at peace together with his destiny, he defined, as a result of he’s bought buddies, love and assist.
On a latest day at his condominium, I watched Mays load remedy from greater than 20 vials right into a weekly tablet organizer.
“I might virtually do that in my sleep,” he mentioned as he organized meds that resembled miniature jelly beans. This one for his kidneys, that one for his coronary heart, his blood strain, and on and on.
Bottles of remedy and images of shut buddies relaxation on David Mays’ desk at his condominium in East Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
There have been 18 drugs in every compartment. And none of that can treatment any of what ails him, he mentioned.
“You simply should hold doing it, and doing it, simply to remain at a sustained stage,” he mentioned. “It’s not like … I really feel nice as a result of I took these things.”
Two ladies in Mays’ life are heartbroken about his situation however respectful of his refusal to attempt dialysis.
“I don’t need him to undergo for the sake of placating different folks,” mentioned Mays’ daughter Jennifer Nutt, 47, of Merced.
Her mother and father divorced when she and her brother had been younger, and Nutt had no relationship with Mays till lately. She’s had her personal trials, Nutt mentioned, together with homelessness.
Father and daughter started connecting within the fall of 2024.
“We spend hours day by day speaking. It’s like a nonstop competition of catching up,” and so they’ve found they’ve the identical cheeky humorousness and pragmatism, and related traits and pursuits.
“We like massive phrases and thick books,” Nutt mentioned.
The opposite girl is Helena Bake, of Perth, Australia, a registered nurse Mays affectionately refers to as “Treasured.” They met in 1985, when Mays was visiting London, and Bake, 18 on the time, was working in a restaurant he visited with buddies. After Bake moved to Australia, Mays visited her many occasions and have become near her whole household.
“He was pretty,” mentioned Bake, who just isn’t stunned by Mays’ angle about his deteriorating well being. “He’s all the time very optimistic and so pragmatic. He has this glorious view of the world and the folks in his life. It’s such a present that he has.”
Mays, who will get by on Social Safety funds, has arrange a GoFundMe web page to assist pay for his cremation and ship his ashes to Bake, to be scattered in his favourite locations in Australia.
These days, medical appointments together with his a number of docs, and the occasional ER go to, have gotten in the best way of one in every of Mays’ favourite actions — the gatherings within the Vons parking zone.
David Mays is “all the time very optimistic and so pragmatic. He has this glorious view of the world and the folks in his life. It’s such a present that he has,” a longtime pal says.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
Mays labored for a few years within the Mar Vista space as a live-in elder care supplier, and he’d stumble upon Bradley at a park, or Morgan within the strip mall that features the grocery retailer. A number of years in the past, they made a behavior of grabbing espresso round 7 a.m. and hanging out close to Mays’ automobile. Bradley’s canine usually hops into the automobile, a Vons worker named Elvis comes out for a smoke break, and others come and go.
“I had a cousin who had diabetes, and he referred to as my mother sooner or later and mentioned, ‘I’m not doing it anymore,’ ” Morgan was saying the opposite day. His mom wasn’t supportive at first, he instructed the klatch, however she listened to her nephew’s rationalization and got here round. “Who might decide somebody for the alternatives they make in that state of affairs?”
“There’s a ready listing for kidneys of two to eight years,” Mays mentioned. “Let’s say [in] 4 or 5 years, there was a kidney out there. Your physique can reject it … and then you definitely’re again to the drafting board…. I instructed Treasured about this like a yr and a half in the past … and she or he mentioned, ‘I’ve to hold up now as a result of I’ve to course of this.’ And the following time I talked along with her, she mentioned, ‘I get it.’ ”
Mays mentioned he doesn’t need to be “a prisoner to a course of, like a machine or one thing.”
“And it’s important to do that indefinitely. It’s not such as you’re on it for 2 or three years…,” he mentioned. “It’s. The. Relaxation. Of. Your. Life.”
“I’ve seen folks that had been on dialysis,” mentioned Bradley, a former musician. “I feel I’d moderately be simply, if I gotta go, I gotta go.”
Morgan mentioned his father, who died final yr, had kidney issues ultimately and resisted excessive measures to increase his life.
“It’s not like he was in any respect suicidal, similar to David’s not,” Morgan mentioned. “The factor about David is, he’s all the time been so resolute about it. We’ve by no means had a dialogue the place I felt like we might waver him, or like he was on the fence.”
When he first resisted dialysis, Mays mentioned, docs set him up in a room with a video that defined the method.
“I watched the entire thing, and that was the clincher,” Mays mentioned. “By the point I bought by way of taking a look at that, I’m simply going, ‘Oh HELL no.’”
It’s not that he desires to die, Mays mentioned. It’s that he desires to dwell on his phrases.
“The irony of the entire thing is, it’s all of the folks that I’ve round me — they’re the explanation I’m prepared to go like this. What I get from them in the best way of being … uplifted and beloved, properly, when you’ve all that, you may take care of something.”
He has his klatch buddies, he has Treasured, he has his daughter in his life once more.
“With folks round that give a rattling about you, care about you, you may deal … with dying, you may take care of dying…. And I instructed my docs I might moderately dwell a shorter time period, however with what I really feel to be some respectable high quality of life, than dwell an extended time period and be depressing. And I might be depressing on dialysis,” Mays mentioned.
“Plus, I’m 70. It ain’t like I’m 30 and there’s a lot life to dwell. I’m the age that I’m, and I wish to go additional, certain, but it surely has to shut out quickly. And I’m nice with that, as a result of I’ve lived.”
steve.lopez@latimes.com
