The long road ahead

The lights have dimmed and the tubes have been removed in Bloomington Hospital room 4524. The family has gathered. The arrangements have been made. All as Tim lay dying.\nWhen he was diagnosed with cancer last February, he weighed 180 pounds and had a full head of brown hair and matching beard. Today he weighs less than 130 pounds, the hair is gone and the skin has yellowed because his liver has failed, leaving a bowling ball-sized build-up of fluid filling his stomach. The chemo was hell, and the radiation worse. All in the hopes of letting Tim see birthday number 50.\nIn the last week and a half, I've spent most of it with Tim's family in the family lounge across the hall from his room. We've talked and yelled, laughed and cried. Most of it was spent eating and playing cards. I thought that was really strange. While Tim lay in the room he had come to know so well in the previous months, I was playing cards and sharing cold turkey with his wife of 27 years. \nIt's not so much that death hurts. Death is really quite simple. It's the waiting for it to happen, and the waiting for the pain to stop hurting after its happened, that's tough.\nThe family has a long road ahead of it. Tim's parents, Marvin and Vivian, get to watch the wholly unnatural act of losing a child. They're living the nightmare parents shudder to imagine. Tim's brother Tom is losing a brother. Chere is thinking about how she's going to have to live the rest of her life without her soul mate, and then Heather, Haley and Jordan all have to live the rest of their lives reminiscing about memories of their father instead of making new ones.\nBut the truth is, after death, life goes on because the people we loved, who have gone before us, would have wanted it that way, rather than us putting ourselves into a perpetual cycle of remorse and regret. \nI was sitting in an easy chair -- the tears in my eyes as plentiful as the raindrops hitting the plate glass window in front of me -- talking on the phone with a friend. I hadn't really done that much this week because I've spent so much of it being there for the family that I really hadn't taken the time to understand what all of this meant to me. I didn't want to leave the hospital. It's a much better place to feel hopeless, powerless and all the other feelings of impotence that accompany those surrounding a loved one going through the dying process. But the phone conversation sort of spurred me along.\nHard as it was knowing Tim could go at any time, I slugged through the damp and dreary world that awaited me as the two glass doors slid aside and went to class. Right now being there for Tim and his family is by far the most important act of friendship I can do. While most other things this week are on hold because of how important that act is, I'm at least ready to take things off hold when it's time, not simply press the red button and let it flash for an eternity.