Gray's Academy

I am not there yet. Not on a plane, or even in a car driving to the airport. I am still home.

I booked this adventure back in April before I left Sicily having spent only eight days on the island. I had, like many of us, stopped traveling. I also stopped traveling because I didn’t have my travel buddy. Making the decision to embark on a solo venture was not an easy one.

We have all traveled to places where we fantasized about what it might be like to live inside our vacation. When I went to Sicily I didn’t want to play there. I wanted to work there. I wanted to, and still might one day be an English teacher in Sicily.

My flight leaves this Friday afternoon out of my local airport in Nofolk, Virginia. There is a hurricane brewing in Florida, as there always this time of year. It could disrupt my travel. I am ambivalent about it. My sister’s husband is in home hospice. She lives 20 miles from me. Like many hospice experiences, it comes slowly and then WHAM it comes at you like a freight train. Then usually the freight train slows down and decides that it will stop a little now and then, meander, sometimes seemingly going in reverse. But this train doesn’t go in reverse, ever. Sure, some people “beat” cancer. But that cancer will leave a scar. For some, it is a reminder to get out there and start living. Cathy’s husband Steve aggressively and bravely battled his stage four prostate cancer for more than six years. He is a much loved man. We will miss you Steve. May your passing be peaceful with you surrounded by those who love you most.

Hospice is powerful reminder of the upside of living in the moment. The disease process doesn’t give you a choice. You can’t plan or predict. It is a perfect example of the joy of rowing your boat gently down the stream. There will be laughter, or merriment at times but in the end life becomes a dream. I never realized until this moment that the song ‘Row your boat’ might be about death!

Time goes by slowly for the family of someone in home hospice. For the person in bed I think it speeds up a bit as many hospice patients spend most hours sleeping. You can’t plan because while time slows down, you can’t know what will come next or what may happen before that last breath. It is agonizing. It is also a beautiful thing to love someone in their final days and do what can be done to make the person feel comfortable and loved. And you do this knowing that there will be some closure for your loved one but those left behind will only be beginning to look for some way to make sense of it all.

When I said goodbye to Steve and Cathy yesterday I knew that their love for one another would soothe Steve in his final days. That was a great comfort. Still, I have mixed feelings about leaving my sister and her family. Not because I harbor any idea that I can change an outcome but because it can be profoundly beautiful to witness a loving family lean into it all. I told Steve when I left that he is teaching all of us how to live more fully in the moment. He smiled and told me to have a wonderful time knowing we would not see each other again. He is an amazing human being and he and my sister have a beautiful family. I am blessed to be a small part of it.