Just another ordinary private in the army of the bereaved...

I wasn't prepared today to learn the fate of a patient I've become so terribly fond of. I've said before that somehow it seemed easier to meet a person knocking on death's door rather than one who had managed to avoid the address, but subsequently showed up late for the party. If I continue to see this person in the halls of the cancer center then surely it means they are staving off the worst-case scenario, right? Sometimes I wish I could live in that naïve nest of fluffy feathers and strong, healthy cells and agreeably leveled tumor markers.

It hit with such force. She's what? Hospice? Really? Perhaps I could reconcile the ache in my gut if I didn't know what comes next...if I had little knowledge of the dying process and the way a person can simply whittle away, physically, cognitively, next to nothing in seemingly a matter of days and how at times it is difficult to decipher between a medicated slumber and the active process of leaving this world for the next. The raspy, slow and deliberately labored breathing of the very person so full of joy and life just a month prior.

She isn't a saint or anything, just a really kind person, with optimism, a new grand baby, too much life left to live. She isn't perfect, just someone who could get excited about an expected child and a new handbag. She isn't so different from all the rest. And I'll mourn them too when the time draws near. Sometimes the experience is more than can be described or imagined. Having a baby, falling in love, losing to death.

C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed frustratingly admonished himself for simply not accepting that the only thing we can do with suffering is to suffer it. He wants to hold onto the notion there might be some way to avoid pain for pain's sake. "It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on."

Death as a potential friend and deliverer allowing one to "strip off that body which is tormenting" is a perception I wish I could embrace. I agree with Lewis and his assessment that grief feels so remarkably like fear and I suppose, other than feeling incredibly sad for this young mother, grandmother, wife and friend, I am incredibly afraid of facing my own inevitable fate. She's approaching the end of her life with such grace and dignity and all I want to do is kick and scream like a child...'this isn't fair!'

"Perhaps [Catie] your own passion destroys the capacity [to receive]." I'm struggling today with the knowledge of the reality of this life we will live and eventually leave. I'm struggling today with the childlike notion of fairness and the mature awareness this is a path we all will take.

She's choosing life until the end. I only hope I can do the same.