How did I get to this age already? Is it a matter of age or is something else going on? I know that death is a part of life. But I liked the part of my life where so much death was not involved. It’s been a tough year.
We lost another friend on Saturday. Cancer. A nearly 3 year battle. And the whole time, I didn’t want to believe it, all I wanted to do was hope. Hope that there was a treatment that would work, hope that there would be more years of quality time. Hope.
Hope. But in the end, it’s inevitable, it’s ending at 55. My husband got to be part of a group of his friends who took him to Vegas. They drove there, like kids heading out after a graduation. At that time Mike had one week of life left, but nobody knew that at the time. He had cancer, he was in pain, the trip wasn’t easy for him, but he got out to experience life one more time. He put the car window down and let his head rest to feel the wind on his face. Think of all the times he’d felt that wind, but now it must have meant more! They went out for a meal of a lifetime, one my husband and the other men will never forget. They watched the musical light show in downtown Vegas. It rained the whole way home. And it was still raining when they brought Mike home. By the time they turned the corner to drop the next guys off, it was sunny & dry. Meaning.
Yesterday my good friend’s sister passed away. In her 50’s battling cancer for many years. She has it, she’s cured, it comes back & then regresses and then takes hold & never lets go. This is my friend who’s always there for everybody else, how can I be there for her? What good can I do?
Not 5 months before, we lost another friend, age 40. Happy, healthy, training for a marathon. Wife & 6 kids. Out running, a piece of plaque loosens, jams in the artery and it’s over. He never knew. Never had a chance. The pain of loss and the inability to believe it’s happening. And the difficulty of watching a family struggle to understand and put their lives back together.
One week later another wife loses her 40 year old husband to a car accident. We know her, but not as well. They live across the country.
Less than 2 months before that, a young woman my husband works with gave birth to her first child. No one had picked up the heart defect in the ultrasounds and after carrying her baby to term, the child died the next day. Another co-worker lost her son years after an accident that took away all quality of his life.
My husband lost his mother in November. We have so many friends who lost parents this last year. And we have so many friends trying to care for aging parents. And how do you say goodbye to a parent who has given you life and cared for you and taught you and loved you unconditionally. Life is tough.
What do you do? How do you help? It seems like what one person needs, another wants no part of. So here we are, we hug, we bring food, we give them space. We continue to be their friend without always looking at their loss.
Life is meant to have a medley of feelings. If there were no lows, there would be no highs. The lows are bad. But without them, the highs wouldn’t be so good. The roller coaster is a greater thrill than the straightaway, even though your heart is in your stomach half the time.
I believe in heaven, I believe that God has prepared a perfect place for us, I believe that through Jesus’ death & resurrection that every believer will go there. Yet even in the belief, even knowing that our loved ones are no longer sick & in pain, it’s so hard to be without them, it’s so hard to think about their family going on without them. And yet we do. We go on. We laugh. We cry. We get in trouble. We get out. We do. We set goals and turn a corner and survive. And we remember.
And we hope! We hope that we were all that we could be to each person we run across in life. That we love and care, take care and take notice whether that person is an acquaintance, co-worker, friend or family. We only have so many days together, can we make the best of them?
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