Making your Dash Count

Two flavors of death. February 17, 2009

I’ve had two encounters with mortality this week.

The wife of a friend died suddenly Saturday night from a massive heart attack. She was only 57 years old. I sat with him at the hospital and accompanied him to the funeral home to help temper the shock of losing his soul mate of 40 years and to help appropriately plan how to honor the only love in his life. There are some things in life one should not have to do alone.

The other, my father in law, who was once larger than life figure, is dwindling toward his end in a nursing home 800 miles away. We visited last week; leaving was one of the hardest most emotional things we have ever done. For all intensive purposes he has just a few weeks to live. It was something we knew would come eventually, but of course were ill prepared for. It seems so wrong to sit and wait, but how can one do anything any different?