Going On

We who are here know only what it is to be alive; what comes after remains as much of a mystery as what could have possibly come before.

I have a friend who is dying. She is 51 years old and has suffered with ovarian cancer for the past six years. The last time she was in remission it didn't last long and she told me that she was afraid all of the time that it would come back. I guess she had a feeling and she was right; it did.

She has decided within the past couple of days to enter hospice care. I know she is tired of fighting and even if she weren't, there is really nothing else to be done. The cancer is spreading and has become terminal. Her body has left her control and has become her enemy in a way, ironic really, since she is the only one who "owns" her body. But that's what disease is, it turns us against ourselves.

So how does one prepare to leave? There are the obvious things to do, tie up the financial and legal ends as well as the social aspect; perhaps saying what was left unsaid, goodbye and I love you.

But what do you do with yourself? When you are alone with your thoughts, what do you think? Do you wonder what it's like when all your thinking stops? Do you look forward to your ascent up up up out of your betrayal of a body? What if you don't know what to think? What if you just wonder and wonder yourself crazy?

Three of the people closest to me have died. When I was younger I was awed at the fact that my own father had gone to the other side of life, a place that was as far away from me and the regular world as humanly possible. How bizarre, I used to think, that someone I knew so well could have that HUGE experience, the experience that most people seem to fear, yet most of the time have absolutely no control over, and then not be able to tell me one word about it! My Bubbie used to say that when it was her time to go, she would just accept it. I didn't want to hear it, didn't believe it. Aren't we all supposed to fight to live, treat death as the ultimate enemy? Perhaps; after all we are all born with that survival instinct. So, with that in mind, how do you finally make that leap to, "I give up. Death, you win."? And incidentally, Bubbie proved me wrong and went with grace.

I don't want to see my friend die. It just does not seem right. But since I am not the one who makes the grand plans of the universe, I have nothing to say about it except I am so very, very sorry. Sorry that she is too young and sorry that her husband and children and parents and siblings will be left without her. I know she will go to a better place than this, the one that turned out to have a miserable end for her, the one that caused her pain and fear. May she and her family rest in that knowledge.