I heard some very dark news last night: a woman we know, the closest friend of a couple who are among our own closest friends, has been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. She is one of the nicest and most intelligent people I know, and has already been though hell: her husband died in a freak accident a few years ago. Now she is under what is almost certainly a death sentence.
There is a secondary awfulness to news like this — it embarrasses me even to acknowledge it, but it is real and nearly universal: it is the sudden shift in how we feel in the presence of the mortally ill. How do we speak? How do we comport ourselves in the presence of someone with whom until recently we shared, as equals, all the normal trivialities of life, but who now lives in a mode that is utterly different, darkened with horror, and from which there is no escape?
Hotel rooms generally have thick dark curtains, because what streams through an uncovered window can disturb a sleeper’s rest. The dying who walk among us are open windows to the Void — and they disturb our sleep as well.
One Comment
My wife and I went through this very thing in 2013 with ‘Joyce and Charlie’. He had multiple organ failure with stage four cancer. They were good friends of ours and my wife and Joyce entered first grade in 1952 together and graduated H-S together. Charlie had many bad days and knew he had little time. Joyce knew that by early 2014 she would be a widow. She was.
We tried as much as possible to treat Charlie and Joyce the same way- as friends-all of us knowing the circs. When Charlie had an okay day we would get together when possible. Charlie appreciated hearing about our lives just like always. It was necessary for him.
Also and this varies with people, Joyce and Charlie were people of faith, him especially. I sensed that must be a help in a terminal circumstance.