Vince...

The past few weeks have been painfully sad for the farm family. We have gathered round Vince and Tina in the last days of his life on earth, standing in for blood kin, monitoring medicines, meeting with nurses and social workers, changing wet beds, shaving Vince, listening to Tina, doing what needs to be done to see that Vince dies with dignity and grace.
Most of us will not have this experience until our parents die. It didn’t used to be this way. As a child, I remember watching my great-aunt Nina come to live with my grandparents as she died with cancer. A special bed was set up in the front room for her next to my grandma. Grandma brought her meals to her as she slowly slipped away from us that summer. We weren’t sheltered or set apart from what was happening. Grandma gave it to us straight... “Aunt Nina is sick and will die. She is here so I can help her. She would like to see you now and then but I need for you not to make too much noise in the front hall.” It seemed natural, right and good that this should be happening at home.
As an adult who has seen death several times over now, I know now how hard that summer was for my grandma and her sister. Walking through the dark valley of death is not easy physically or emotionally. Watching someone you love hurt, lose their connections to you and this world, change into a person in-between this life and the next, can be overwhelming. And it can be the sweetest time of life, taking your breath away with little glimpses of glory.
I sat by Vince, my feet up on the bed, talking about our grandchildren who love him and whom he loves. I told him about Matthew’s remembrance of him in that morning’s phone call. Matthew wondered if they went fishing together again, would Vince feel better. We talked about building our house together, all the times he growled at me or someone else because we weren’t doing it “right”, the lunches shared sitting under the shade trees while we watched our house come alive. We laughed a lot and when the drugs took him off to the pain free Land of Nod, I sat awhile longer giving thanks for this unlikely friend.
Vince has moved to Solace, our hospice home for those who are actively dying. The pain of bone cancer requires medical skills we do not have. We go and sit, hold his hand, talk and laugh, tell stories and wait... wait for this last job of Vince’s to be completed. And in the waiting, God sits with us all, holding us in the love that does not let us go even in the shadow of death. Life, life and death, life in death... Thanks be to God for the mercies and grace that flow like the rivers of life when we die. In all things, life and death, I am content.