The Last Curve of the Road

I've got death on my mind tonight -- not mine, just death in general.

My oldest son's former roommate lost control of his car on a curve on a windy mountain road in the fog early this morning. His car ran through a guardrail, skidded across a field, and ended up wedged between two trees where it burst into flames, killing him. He was 23 years old, and leaves behind a wife and small child. (In a bitterly ironic twist of fate, his own father was killed in a car accident, also, at the age of 22.)

Roger was a friend and mentor to Andy, very much like an older brother. He let Andy move in with them so that he would not have the long commute from our house to the restaurant where they both worked. It was Andy's first out-of-my-parents'-house experience, and he learned an awful lot about life and living over there (not all of it good). After Andy moved back home a month ago, they talked on the phone sometimes. It's terribly, terribly sad!

Once in a while, I get fixated on the thought of death and dying. I wonder what it feels like to cross from this world into the next. Is there really peace, as some people describe, or is there terrible fear and pain? Is it better to die instantly, without warning, or to have plenty of advance warning as your body disintegrates and the medical prognosis becomes grim?

I have learned a lot about suffering in the past seven years. I've experienced firsthand the way a body can break down and turn on itself. At my lowest point, I laid helplessly in a hospital bed lacking even the basic dignity of bowel/bladder control. Don had to regularly check the legs that I could not feel to see if they were twisted. He cleaned the bed linens when I soiled myself, diligently doctored my bed sores, and then propped me up on pillows to bathe me with warm water and shower gel. He kept my turtle bucket lined with a fresh bag during my fierce spells of vomiting from chemo. When my hair was coming out, he would pick up the hunks from the arm of my chair where I stacked them and discard them without a word. He's watched me crawl back up onto my feet over and over again, only to be knocked down again by another punch of the cancer as if I were one of those blow-up plastic bopper dolls.

Oh sure, there's plenty of time to say good-bye as you watch someone waste away from cancer or another lingering illness. But is it kinder than a quick and sudden death? I'm not sure. I do believe that there are some people who begin to pull away a little once they realize you are going to die. This may just be self-preservation, to cushion to blow of death. Or it may be to avoid the reality that everyone -- not just cancer victims -- are going to die one day.

And who knows? The cancer may not get me in the end. It might be an unfamiliar road on a foggy night that ends my suffering and settles my questions about death once and for all. Either way, I'm glad that only God knows when and how it will be -- because, right now, I want to concentrate on living!