And Now She Can Rest

I've heard it said that apart from dying yourself, losing someone you love is the the thing we fear the most. My latest visit with Blue brings this home with a clarity I can't pretend away.

There's a storm brewing not far off. The clouds are turning the sky dark and tinged with yellow and I can feel the air getting heavier, the wind gathering in the distance. Bubba crawls into the recliner with me, whining anxiously, his entire body trembling. I comfort him as best I can while watching Blue try to sleep between the coughing spells that rack her small, emaciated body. How anyone this haggard - truth be told, this skeletal - can still be alive is beyond me. The sleeplessness of the night before shows clearly on her face and I'd be surprised if she weighs more than 75 or 80 pounds, maybe even less. At this stage of cancer, one bad night can do amazing damage. It's a hateful, vicious thing but she's becoming a shadow right in front of us and it's beyond unbearable to witness.

The coughing finally subsides and she sleeps, breathing raggedly but steadily. The storm breaks and I can hear rain on the roof.   Bubba, still fearful, burrows into the narrow space between the arm of the recliner and my side. I listen to the whirring of the box fan someone has propped up in a nearby chair, the even hum of the window unit battling the almost 100 degree heat outside, the rain, and the sound of Blue's daughter crying in the next room as she mindlessly folds clothes and clean sheets.

“It's not going to be much longer, is it,” she asks, as I get ready to leave, only it's not really a question.

“I don't know,” I tell her, feeling my heart seize with her pain and my own, hating this cancer with a passion I didn't know I had, hating whatever deity visited it even more.

“She's in God's hands,” I say and for a rare moment, it feels true and is almost comforting.

That was on Saturday.  At just after 5:30 on the following Monday morning, my friend Blue died.

If heaven exists, perhaps its street are lined with gold.  Perhaps there are choirs of angels on every corner.  But what I imagine is a place in the country where there are songbirds instead of sirens and 18 wheelers, a place where the old are made young, the sick are restored and friends and loved ones are re-united.  No one will be in pain, no one will suffer, every dog and cat we've ever loved will be waiting, there will be music, heavenly or otherwise, from dusk to dawn and Blue will be part of it.   

Because if heaven exists, then I know she's there.  And if she's there, it comforts me to know that she's watching over us all.