Many of you may be wondering about a post I wrote earlier last week. I wrote about a dear friend of mine who was fighting cancer. Doctors reported that she wouldn't make it through the night. Her breathing had dropped down to 2 or 3 breaths per minute, sometimes less; she'll most likely never wake up again.
That's a heavy place to be in; in that moment, waiting. Few, if any, places are darker. And so, what do you do? What do you do when you are powerless, and hopeless, and lost?
And so we prayed. As individuals, we prayed. As a community, we prayed. As fellow believers for a stranger we'd never met we prayed.
And when the praying was done. We waited.
Several of us discussed prayer. Do our words have an effect on the outcome or merely ourselves? Does praying make a difference or is it merely happenstance that the thing we prayed for comes about? That day I prayed for one thing, that my friend would have the opportunity to speak to his wife again (as he had missed the small window where she was awake the day before), that he would get to say the things he needed to say.
I held my breath and waited, but I dared not hope. I was reminded of a quote from the Shawshank Redemption, "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."
Miracle is such a funny word. We toss it around at everything and we never really wrestle with what it means. It's kinda like "love". I love's me the pizza. I love you mom. It becomes watered down and powerless.
My friend buzzed through on Skype the following evening and I waited for the bad news that I had been expecting all day. I braced myself. I hardened my emotions.
But the shoe never fell.
Instead I was greeted by, "Well, she's still with us. She woke up today and I got talk with her."
Was that a miracle? I don't know. But what I had asked God for happened and the unexpected took place. Despite all of that, I dared not hope for more. It was enough that my buddy got to talk to his wife one last time and I could tell that he was more at peace than the night before.
So again I waited and I held my breath.
Friday afternoon my phone rang and it was my buddy's number. Once again my heart sank and I prepared myself for what I knew was coming.
But it wasn't him. It was her. There was shock. There was joy. And there was terror.
I fancy myself a bit of a wordsmith. Most of the time I can easily and quickly command language, but I was caught like a cat up to no good. I had asked myself earlier if I wanted this conversation, if I wanted my chance to say good bye. See, I don't believe in 'good bye', not really. I don't believe that this life is all there is to us a people, that there is an existence that happens beyond this world and that even if someone sheds this broken flesh, that shortly I will run into them again in another place and another time.
Yet here I was, on the phone. The first thing I noticed is that my iPhone's battery was at 20% so I quickly plugged it into my MacBook so that we weren't cut off again. And then we began to talk.
We laughed.
We joked.
She told me about her progress. How yesterday she spent more time awake and that she ate a little food. That today she spent more time awake and ate even more food.
We complained about work.
We talked about Batman.
And then we said good bye.
The last thing she said to me was, "I'll talk to you again soon."
I thought a lot about Shawshank Redemption this weekend. I thought about the theme of hope. At the end of the movie, Red is off to Mexico so see Andy, and he closes the film with this quote:
"I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."
"I'll talk to you again soon."
Do you know what the funny thing is? I believe her. She's stubborn like that.
Don't miss understand. I'm still aware of the reality of things. I am aware that the doctors aren't looking at treatment options, that they are focusing on pain management. But she hasn't given up hope, she and her husband are working at different options. They're fighting and hoping; that's really the key I realized. You can't let that hope go.
There's another quote from Andy in that movie, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies."
I hope.
2 comments:
Bob, I'm glad that you and your friend's husband were both able to speak to her again. My sad story is that when my father died, I never did get a chance to "officially" say goodbye. The morning my father went into a coma, he and I sat in the living room and talked about how school was going (I was graduating from college and had taken all my finals) and about how my life in general was going. I knew he was laboring for breath, but it was still a great conversation. Not even thirty minutes after we had sat around the living room chatting, my father fell and it was obvious he was in distress. As the ambulance took my father (and my mother went with him), I said, "I'll be there in a minute. See ya dad". I wished (and still do), for one more chat. Laura
Bob, Your story brought tears to my eyes. I do believe in the power of prayer. Even if we are only able to spend another hour, day, week, or month with our loved ones, it is time we should always cherish. And the memories of that time can never be taken away from us. These are the times when we really start to ponder what life is all about and what is important. Thank you for sharing. Julie
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