When you lose a spouse, you are a "widow" or "widower"
When you lose a parent, you are an "orphan"
When you lose a child, there are no words.
I spent this morning at church, for the funeral of a two-year old boy, one we'd gotten to know in the past year as he battled, like my son, a brain tumor.
Sadly, his, as we learnt a couple of weeks ago, did not yield to treatment.
On Monday, I learnt of his death (which we by then expected)at the same time that I heard from a friend that her best friend's father had just being diagnosed with an inoperable cancer and given a few months to live, and I got to wonder what was more terrifying: death itself, or a death "sentence" of that kind, when you are fully conscious, feel in fine form, and are suddenly given a deadline and little or no hope of getting past it.
And you feel that rush of terror that it could happen to you out of the blue, and the secret feeling of joy that it is not happening to you, and that you are still alive. And today, I similarly felt that strange mixture of pain (sharing that of parents whose previous experience - that of a very sick child - was very similar to yours), guilt and joy (mine is still alive) and anguish (but what if "it" comes back?). And I cried freely (which I don't often do), and I'll never know what actually caused it. And right now I am trying to make sense but I am just confused and drained.
There's special bond between parents with very sick children - which I imagine must be similar to what soldiers and others that have faced death, the loss of close ones and other terrifying experiences together - we don't have to explain our state of mind to one another. We don't have to talk about it. We simply share that same overwhelming experience, and we live on with it, as we can. People often talk about courage in such circumstances, and we say the same about our children, but really, we have no choice. So it's not really courage, because there is no specific will to face that experience, just resilience, or a simple presence in the face of it. That presence is simply life, facing death more closely than usual (or more visibly than we care to notice the rest of the time).
I have no way (thankfully) to really know if the parents of this little boy are now somehow beyond us, in a different realm of experience, but I don't think so, because we've shared that proximity of death, and the very special kind of pain it carries - a permanent terror, a feeling of dread that never goes away - together (or, more precisely, in parallel, because the is a uniquely personal, intimate, experience) for so long. My wife and the mother of another sick little girl have spent so many days with the parents of that boy in the hospital over the past year, and they were with them over the last week-end, and they were a welcome presence for these parents because they were providing a friendly presence without the need to ask "why?" and "how are you?". We already know there is no answer.
The father of that friend has already planned the next few weeks: he is going to go on a trip with his wife, he is going to throw a big party over a week-end to see all his friends, and he is going to open a number of good bottles of wine he has in his cellar.
I am amazed by his fortitude, but he has the right attitude. You never know what's going to happen, whether death striking tomorrow, or miraculous recovery, so you must never forget what's really important in life: love, friends, having fun, being in peace with yourself.
You have to enjoy life while you can.
And if you can, spare a thought for the little (and not so little) children who are only given a glimpse of life.
Update [2006-2-2 12:20:16 by Jerome a Paris]: Thanks to all for your comments and testimonials. I have cried through several of them, and I don't have the courage now to giver them proper attention via individual replies. I think it does matter that we can share these stories, open up, and be warmed or enlightened by the words and experiences of others. Politics is ultimately about organising and sustaining communities (usually national or local) - these diaries are thus fully political, even if it is not in the narrow sense we use that word most of the time.