Just like Brian said in the email I kept getting over and over five years after it was sent...five years after he died...
My best friend forever since we were five years old got a call from her youngest son last Thursday. He was in the E.R. with severe back pain. He thought he'd slipped a disk. After his blood work an MRI and CT Scan his slipped disk turned out to be stage 4 metastatic cancer. Lungs, pancreas and liver involved. I have known him all of his life --I have known of him before he had life. I was there when he was born. He's 49 years old. The same age my oldest son turned today. They played together as children.
The doctors have said it is likely he will never leave the hospital.
Needless to say they are all in shock. He is in denial and shock. I am devastated for them. All of them. I have cried until I was sick. Terribly sad for him and the life that he had planned that will now be left unfinished. Devastated for my friend because I know what she does not know. I know what is coming for her for many, many months and even years to come.
I know the sadness, the regrets, the guilt, the sleepless, endless nights; I know how this will change every part of her life and even her personality. How it will change and even possibly destroy what's left of her small and dwindling family. I know the many facets of hurt that will hit her one right after the other. How strangers and even people she loves will say the wrong things and hurt her and how friends that she thought would be there for her --will turn away and even family that can't handle the "grief-sodden" person that she will become and will grow weary of the sadness and try to hurry her past it and if she doesn't comply --eventually drop off the radar.
I know how she will call into question every belief she ever had about goodness and fairness in the world and even at times, doubt God's goodness and possibly grow weak in her faith.
I dread to the point of panic her having to face the decisions that she will eventually be faced with. Decisions I was not faced with like making the choice for life support or not, hospice or home care, continued feeding or withholding nourishment and God-forbid, removal of life support. Then there are the decisions I did have to make: Burial or cremation; scattering ashes or keeping them in an urn, vaults, caskets, memorial stones, memorial service or funeral, what to say, who to call on, music, preacher, graveside service. These are all horrible, horrible decisions that a parent should NEVER have to make for their child.
I want to protect her from having to watch her child suffer to the point that "death", the most feared word a mother can imagine --will be the lesser of the two evils. And cringe because I know I cannot.
I fear myself - saying the wrong thing and causing the pain so many have unknowingly caused me. I pray I never do that.
I fear losing her after 61 years as friends as close as sisters. Sounds ridiculous --but I know it can happen because I lost the closest friend I'd ever had after a 38-year friendship. I've lost my other two children because of it so yes, it can happen, and I know that.
I wish I could shield her from all that is ahead, but I cannot; no more than anyone could shield me from it. I hope, I PRAY that I can be there for her. Be there as someone that truly understands what she is going through. I pray that I have learned something from all of this in order to be there for my friend like so many were for me when I went through it. I pray that after the dozens of books I've read on the subject that I can say the right things and that I can minister to her in the way she needs.
We both see now why I was strategically placed "here" 17 miles from her instead of the 80 we had been. We were never looking here. We had no intentions of moving here. We only looked at this one house and it was certainly not the house of our dreams and yet, here we are.
It was not for the reasons that I assumed - so that my son would come. He doesn't. It was not because it was an ideal location. It certainly wasn't to help my daughter and I bond. And we could never figure out - Why God would have chosen to put us here of all places.
I guess now I know. God help me to carry forward the comfort that I have been given.
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