They collect a number of occasions per week within the car 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 of our major topics of conversation,” stated 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 advised me repeatedly that he doesn’t need dialysis therapy, regardless that it would lengthen his life.
“I get it, because it’s a lot of hours out of your day,” stated Morgan, a schoolteacher who lives close by. “People think you go in for dialysis for 15 minutes before you go straight to work. But really, 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 received greater than a dozen nationwide journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
His therapy would require that he go to a dialysis middle 3 times per week, for 4 hours every time, Mays stated.
“For the rest of my life.”
“I don’t think I could do it,” stated klatcher Equipment Bradley, 70, who lives in a van close to the grocery store along 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 Protected Parking L.A. program. Mays later moved into an house in East Hollywood and nonetheless lives there, however his well being has continued to deteriorate.
“He is Stage 5,” stated Dr. Thet Thet Aung, Mays’ nephrologist at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles.
David Mays, middle, enjoys a morning get-together with Paul Morgan, left, and Equipment Bradley in a Vons car parking zone in West Los Angeles on June 25, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
For such sufferers, Aung stated, dying might be imminent. She advised me she’s had many conversations with Mays about his therapy choices, together with dialysis in a clinic or self-administered at residence. However not everybody does nicely on dialysis, she added, and when a affected person makes an knowledgeable alternative, “we respect their wishes.”
Mays has a refreshingly wholesome perspective about mortality. Multibillion-dollar industries cater to those that wish to look youthful and reside longer, and about 25% of Medicare’s huge outlay is spent on sufferers within the final 12 months of life, lots of whom select life-extending medical procedures.
Mays, within the time I’ve identified him, has been practical moderately than fatalistic. He has advised me he doesn’t suppose bravery, religion or spirituality has something to do along with his need to let nature take its course.
“It transcends those things,” he stated.
He’s at peace along with his destiny, he defined, as a result of he’s obtained buddies, love and help.
On a current day at his house, I watched Mays load medicine from greater than 20 vials right into a weekly tablet organizer.
“I could almost do this in my sleep,” he stated 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 medicine and photographs of shut buddies relaxation on David Mays’ desk at his house in East Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
There have been 18 tablets in every compartment. And none of that can remedy any of what ails him, he stated.
“You just have to keep doing it, and doing it, just to stay at a sustained level,” he stated. “It’s not like … I feel great because I took this stuff.”
Two ladies in Mays’ life are heartbroken about his situation however respectful of his refusal to attempt dialysis.
“I don’t want him to suffer for the sake of placating other people,” stated Mays’ daughter Jennifer Nutt, 47, of Merced.
Her dad and mom divorced when she and her brother had been younger, and Nutt had no relationship with Mays till just lately. She’s had her personal trials, Nutt stated, together with homelessness.
Father and daughter started connecting within the fall of 2024.
“We spend hours every day talking. It’s like a nonstop festival of catching up,” they usually’ve found they’ve the identical cheeky humorousness and pragmatism, and related traits and pursuits.
“We like big words and thick books,” Nutt stated.
The opposite girl is Helena Bake, of Perth, Australia, a registered nurse Mays affectionately refers to as “Precious.” 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 complete household.
“He was lovely,” stated Bake, who will not be stunned by Mays’ perspective about his deteriorating well being. “He’s always very positive and so pragmatic. He has this wonderful view of the world and the people in his life. It’s such a gift 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.
Recently, medical appointments along with his a number of docs, and the occasional ER go to, have gotten in the best way of one among Mays’ favourite actions — the gatherings within the Vons car parking zone.
David Mays is “always very positive and so pragmatic. He has this wonderful view of the world and the people in his life. It’s such a gift 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’ automotive. Bradley’s canine usually hops into the car, 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 called my mom one day and said, ‘I’m not doing it anymore,’ ” Morgan was saying the opposite day. His mom wasn’t supportive at first, he advised the klatch, however she listened to her nephew’s rationalization and got here round. “Who could judge someone for the choices they make in that situation?”
“There’s a waiting list for kidneys of two to eight years,” Mays stated. “Let’s say [in] four or five years, there was a kidney available. Your body can reject it … and then you’re back to the drawing board…. I told Precious about this like a year and a half ago … and she said, ‘I have to hang up now because I have to process this.’ And the next time I talked with her, she said, ‘I get it.’ ”
Mays stated he doesn’t wish to be “a prisoner to a process, like a machine or something.”
“And you have to do this indefinitely. It’s not like you’re on it for two or three years…,” he stated. “It is. The. Rest. Of. Your. Life.”
“I’ve seen people that were on dialysis,” stated Bradley, a former musician. “I think I’d rather be just, if I gotta go, I gotta go.”
Morgan stated his father, who died final 12 months, had kidney issues in the long run and resisted excessive measures to increase his life.
“It’s not like he was at all suicidal, just like David’s not,” Morgan stated. “The thing about David is, he’s always been so resolute about it. We’ve never had a discussion where I felt like we could waver him, or like he was on the fence.”
When he first resisted dialysis, Mays stated, docs set him up in a room with a video that defined the method.
“I watched the whole thing, and that was the clincher,” Mays stated. “By the time I got through looking at that, I’m just going, ‘Oh HELL no.’”
It’s not that he needs to die, Mays stated. It’s that he needs to reside on his phrases.
“The irony of the whole thing is, it’s all the people that I have around me — they’re the reason I’m willing to go like this. What I get from them in the way of being … uplifted and loved, well, when you have all that, you can deal with anything.”
He has his klatch buddies, he has Valuable, he has his daughter in his life once more.
“With people around that give a damn about you, care about you, you can deal … with death, you can deal with dying…. And I told my doctors I would rather live a shorter period of time, but with what I feel to be some decent quality of life, than live a longer period of time and be miserable. And I would be miserable on dialysis,” Mays stated.
“Plus, I’m 70. It ain’t like I’m 30 and there’s so much life to live. I am the age that I am, and I would like to go further, sure, but it has to close out soon. And I’m fine with that, because I have lived.”
