Not Goodbye

Today, I have no heart to write anything clever, significant, or profound.

A friend is dying, having chosen to stop treatment for a virulent cancer that took him unawares 18 months ago at an age that makes me want to load my lungs with the fetid Southern air and scream UNFAIIIIRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

He has two small children, the youngest of whom was only 5 months old when his cancer was diagnosed. He has a wife who adores him, he has parents who are not ready to say good-bye, (are parents ever?) he has siblings who expected to grow old with him.

I won't make this post about extolling all his virtues, because that's terribly maudlin and not what he would want. Suffice it to say, that he is a genuinely good and kind person and the world will feel the loss of him.

There isn't much we can do from 900 miles away. I am cursing the impotence I feel. But in many ways, it has been much easier for Husband and I to reconcile ourselves to the possibility of losing him. They moved from here several years ago, and we have not seen them since Jim took sick. We have not had to watch as cancer ravaged his body.

We have the luxury of remembering him healthy, strong and vibrant.

I was their doula when Kate gave birth to their first child. In the delivery room, Jim went with the baby while the staff did all the stuff they insist on doing to newborn babies. I stayed with Kate and held her hand while they delivered the placenta and then stitched her up.

At one point, I looked over at Jim and the baby. He was gazing at her with such intense love and pride that I felt my heart squeeze. Those are the kind of moments that I miss now that I am no longer practicing. I feel so incredibly privileged to have shared that moment of intimacy with them.

Jim was so big and strong and she was such a tiny, pale pink that his strength and vitality seemed magnified. In that moment, nobody would have disputed that a man such as he was surely invinceable.

That is how I choose to remember him. I think, that is how he chooses to remember himself, and that is why he has chosen to let go.

Kate and Jim, everything about how the two of you have handled this fucked up thing called cancer is a testament to your love for one another, your commitment to your beatiful children, your strength, your dignity and your grace.

I don't know how to end this. I want to keep blabbering on about how unfair it all is.

I don't want to say good-bye, or Godspeed, or any of the other stuff that people say.

So I'll just say....Cancer is Stupid.