We sat on his back porch, David* and I, thinking and talking about life and death, living and dying, and, without specifically saying the word, healing… He had always enjoyed being outside, but as his life was slowly ebbing away, he was finding so much more beauty in the creation around him than he had ever noticed before. He was grasping at life, even as his was being taken from him.
“For the first time,” David said, “I feel as though the cancer really has a hold on me.”
This was not my first visit with David, and I could see, even without his having said so, that his disease process was taking its toll on his body.
David continued to share with me how he had been re-establishing contact with family members, some with whom he had not spoken in years… his mother and his brothers and sisters and his now adult children… Over the past few weeks, they had all been coming to visit. There was still one sister that he’d spoken with, but who had not yet been able to get down to visit. A time had been set though, and within the next few weeks, she would be coming…
I knew that he had already discussed with his mother his funeral and memorial services… who he wanted to officiate… where the services would be held… what he wanted them to be like… where his remains would go… things of this type. Other things he was getting set up and in place as well…
As our visit ended in prayer, knowing he was dying, and that there wasn’t anything that would change that, he said:
For the first time in a long time, I feel really good on the inside.
Healing, in the midst of encroaching death…
A sacred time…
*not his real name
#LifeJournal 