She lives, laughs and meets fate on her own terms

This was going to be a lighthearted piece about Jewish delis, the happy, noisy, busy places that specialize in irreverent waitresses and sandwiches thick enough to choke a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys.

I had visited maybe a dozen of them, from Abe’s to Ziggy’s, while trying vainly to limit my food intake in the face of servers who couldn’t believe I would leave anything but crumbs on my plate.

“One corned beef sandwich,” I said to a waitress at Jerry’s Famous Deli, “is enough to feed a family of four.” Her look of disdain made me feel small and inadequate, the way a counterman at a New York deli made me feel because I hadn’t hollered my order in his face.

After eating at all those places in L.A., I decided that it was time to conclude my research before I ended up looking like a sumo wrestler, but there was one more deli I had to visit. Nate ‘n Al’s in Beverly Hills is where Kaye Coleman presides as queen of the deli waitresses and master of the one-liner. I had to go there.

She’s been at Nate’s for 38 years and is never at a loss for words. She once told a customer when an order got too long and detailed, “I’m just bringing you breakfast, not fitting you for a suit.” And when David Begelman, the president of Columbia Pictures who was being investigated for check forgery, asked if he could sign the tab, Coleman replied with the speed of a cobra strike, “You can sign the tab but I want the tip in cash.”

But this isn’t about Coleman’s wit or even about delis. It’s about her life and her willingness to live it laughing in the time she has left. I went to Nate’s to talk to this vibrant, funny, high-energy lady and was told in stunning nonchalance that she has a deadly form of cancer, and it’s spreading.

Coleman herself offered the information almost as an afterthought to a conversation about delis, with a kind of oh yeah, by the way, as though suddenly remembering a minor detail. “I have metastasized malignant melanoma,” she said as we sat in a booth. “It’s in my lungs and my buttocks.” I learned later it might also be in her kidneys.

It was the kind of moment that cries out for drama, but there was none. The restaurant was full and noisy. Coleman was eating a small bowl of boiled potatoes and glanced up to notice the stunned expression on my face. “I’ve chosen not to do treatment, not to deal with it,” she said, looking at me straight on. “Hey, I’m 68 years old, so why do anything? If I die with this disease, fine. I just don’t want to be sick. I don’t want to just exist.” She went back to the potatoes, paused and added characteristically, “Don’t put my age in the paper. I won’t get dates.”

Life is what Kaye Coleman is all about. She shimmers with energy, glows with a kind of wry exuberance and warms a room with her presence. Waitressing isn’t enough to exhaust her amazing vitality. For 23 years she has volunteered at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital emergency room. “I also did their hospice for 20 years,” she said, “so I know what the bottom line is. I just want to keep on keeping on.”

It’s not as though she’s totally given up. Friends won’t let her. Arlene Ray, the founding president of STOP Cancer, has helped raise more than $100,000 from customers at Nate’s in Coleman’s name. The money is being used for research at the USC/Norris Cancer Center, where a serum is being developed that could prolong her life, and the lives of others.

“If I live, fine,” Coleman said with a wave of her hand. “But I’m not going to spend the next five or 10 years taking chemicals. When it’s over, it’s over. Either way, I’m going to live until I die.”

She has been honored by the city of Beverly Hills with a proclamation that calls her “an institution, a tradition, a treasure.” Next month, she will receive the Human Spirit Award from the Wellness Community of Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to helping cancer patients fight for recovery.

Coleman doesn’t know how much time she has left. “I didn’t ask,” she says, “they didn’t say.” But I know this. Whatever time that remains will be spent absorbing the blue sky and the bright sun, smelling the rain, bustling about Nate’s, loving her children and her grandchildren, amusing her customers and helping others. It will be a life filled with Kaye Coleman, facing uncertainty with a laugh and a snap of the fingers. That’s not a bad way for anyone to walk away.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.