A Privileged Glimpse

I’ve heard people say what a gift and privilege it is to walk a difficult journey, like cancer, with a friend. Although I never doubted it, I never quite fully understood it…until now. My uncle is dying. Not just some day he will pass on, but any day, any moment, we are all just sitting around by his bedside waiting for it to happen.

He is 94. He has lived an amazing life of service to others, often choosing the road less traveled to care for those in need. He was a doctor and made a career of going to the poor and choosing to serve there instead of follow the opportunity of wealth and comfort. He started the Santa Teresita Hospital in Duarte, CA. Literally started it. He is the man that said, “Hey, let’s make a hospital here” and then made it happen. He was a practicing medical doctor well into his 80’s. In his 90’s, he continued the life he knew as a boy growing up on a farm by cultivating the garden in his back yard with care and persistency.

And here he lies, weak and frail. He has gone into renal failure from diabetes. He has a weak heart and no working kidneys. His body is shutting down, ever so slowly. He can’t move his own body. He comes in and out of sleep with spotty lucidity. Some moments he recognizes everyone in the room, at other times he looks lost and frightened. He groans in pain and agony.

All the while his wife of 30 years sits by his side caring for his every need. She laboriously turns his body and props him up when he wants to look around. She rubs his dry and wrinkled skin with a rough cloth to help relieve the itch as the toxins try to exit his body. She holds his ice-filled water bottle and straw near his mouth so he can sip, the only thing he has had in his digestive system other than a few sips of milk in the past 15 days. She watches the clock, anxiously awaiting the next time she can administer the pain medication given to him by the Hospice care workers. She professes her love to him, and calls out to comfort him as she says “I’m here, I’m right here.”

Watching her stare at him with love and heartache as deep as the soul knows has been gut wrenching and joy-filled at the same time. It has been such a gift to be offered the opportunity to peek at this intimacy in this precious and difficult time in their lives. It has been a privilege to be a tangible help and presence in the big and little pieces of this otherwise horrible time. We have sat around and talked about fun memories of the past, and made jokes to break the sadness as we sit waiting for death to take control.

Yesterday I heard him ask why he couldn’t have dialysis, because as a doctor, he knows what will happen. I listened as his wife had to push past the knot in her throat to tell him for the 3rd time, his memory faltering not realizing he had heard it before, that the doctors say his heart isn’t strong enough. Then I watched as his expression changed.  You could see the wheels turning inside his head, the information sinking in, then his mind playing out what he knew to be the natural consequences of this inaction. It was gut wrenching. For all of us there to witness it.

I have heard an old man profess his love to those around him with common and wrote words that express a truth and rawness that is so real and undeniable. I have seen tears shed that speak louder than any word can express. It has been a gift to be here. To feel like I am in a place I don’t deserve to be, to see and hear things that are so private I shouldn’t be watching and hearing. Yet I have been invited in to be a part of this.

Now I understand when people say what a gift it is to walk a difficult journey with a friend or family member. I am grateful that I have had the privilege to be a part of this.