Death Watch

This week has been a death watch. Not the most pleasant topic, perhaps, but there you have it. I feel like everywhere I turn, someone I know is waiting for someone they love to die. It is a part of life after all.

My husband's grandmother is the one closest to us. She is in her 90's, has recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, and her body is shutting down. In full renal failure, it is only a matter of days. Thomas and his father are trying to get to New Jersey to see her before she passes, but the weather (full-force blizzards, the likes of which have not been seen in more than a decade) is not cooperating. I only pray that they make it before she goes. She, however, seems at peace. She is coherent and comfortable and ready to go be with her husband, who passed more than 15 years ago, and her Lord. While she will be missed greatly, her time has come, and it is OK. All in all, not a bad way to go--after a long life, ready to go on to what comes next, with little pain, and with a few days' notice to say your good-byes.

A friend in Illinois is waiting for her estranged mother to pass. She has good reasons for being estranged from her mother, and she is at peace with her decision to remain that way even now. But she is trying to be there for her siblings, and it is causing her emotional stress. So I pray for her that her mother's time comes quickly and peacefully so that my friend might get on with her life.

Then there is the most heartbreaking death watch. A total stranger. I have never met her or her family, nor is it likely that I ever will. She is a neighbor of a friend of my sister's, and I only know of her through technology--blog posts on Facebook. A two-year-old baby, Layla Grace, with neuroblastoma. Her family has prayed for a miracle and asked others to do so as well, but they will not get the miracle they have hoped for. I believe they have already received their miracle, but of course they won't be able to recognize that for some time to come. At this time, Layla's body is shutting down, and her family is waiting, knowing that the end is very near and their baby girl will soon be whole and healthy and pain-free again--but not with them.

Why is this death, the death of someone I will never know, the hardest to take? Because she is a child. Because, as a parent, I can imagine the pain her own parents must be experiencing. I can imagine it, but I do not know it, and I hope I never will. Just the thought of the pain of losing a child is crushing, almost beyond bearing. Actually experiencing it must be nearly intolerable. My own father died over 20 years ago, at the age of 43. This was, of course, difficult for the whole family. But time heals and life marches forward. However, my grandmother, his mother, has never fully recovered from this loss, even though he was a grown man when cancer took him. Parents aren't meant to bury their children, no matter how old those children are when they are buried.

And yet life goes on. Even now, I look out my window at cold rain. Dreary, yes, but it is preparing the ground for spring that is around the corner, giving nourishment to the plants that are dormant and soaking it up for a few weeks from now when they will burst forth with life anew. Some of my plants will probably not make it back from this rather harsh winter, but most of them will. The cycle of life.

And human life goes on. My youngest sister recently announced that she is expecting her first child. My first niece or nephew in over 13 years. I am so excited that I think of it every single day, several times a day, even though my sister lives halfway across the country in Los Angeles. I am easily as excited about this new niece or nephew as I was about my own pregnancies (perhaps more so--there's no puking involved this time, at least not for me!). And my brother is about to get married to a girl our whole family adores. Showers, parties, wedding festivities and plans, and loads of out-of-town relatives we haven't seen in too many years! Not to mention my hot husband, the best man, in a tuxedo! I can't wait!

Even in sad times, there is much to look forward to. That is the way of life, and I am thankful for it. Today I am thankful to be alive. And I must paraphrase from a friend's earlier Facebook status because it is fitting for me today in ways she could never have known when she posted it:

"This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Even though it is cold and raining and has been for days and days. Because the sun will shine again...soon.