Today, I sat with a family...

Today, I sat with a family, actually a mother and daughter, in their home. The husband/step-dad has brain cancer. He's fifty-nine. The doctors stopped chemotherapy and radiation because it's having no affect.

As the wife, the daughter and I sat at the dining-room table, the husband/step-dad lay in a recliner in the living-room. He's as much somewhere else as he is here. Today was his first day with Hospice.

As the three of us sat at the table the two of them poured out their hearts and tears flowed like perfume from an alabaster jar. "It's not fair," they both said. He's a good man.

How do I respond? What do I do? I'm the Chaplain and most every week I encounter things that don't seem fair. I sit with families in their ashes.

What do I say?

"We haven't told him he's dying," said his wife.

I remain silent for a several, seconds. How I respond is crucial, I think to myself.

Eventually, I break the silence, "Do you think he knows?"

Tears flood from his wife's eyes like someone turned on a faucet.

"I'm sure he knows. A couple of weeks ago he wanted to talk to me about funeral arrangements. I told him I didn't want to talk about that," she said.

The step-daughter interjected: "And he didn't talk about it or hardly anything else since."

"What does that say to you," I asked.

Wisely, the daughter said, "He's honoring her wishes. He's not talking about what he knows is happening because he knows how badly it hurts my mom."

My heart was struck as if by lightning, but how do I say what my heart is telling me. What are the right words?

"Does he have anyone to talk to about what he knows is happening to him?" I asked

Long silence.

Finally, "No."

"As I listened to your story, I got the feeling you are his best friend," I said to the wife.

"I am. I am. I am his best friend, and he's mine," she sobbed with tears flowing uncontrollably down her cheeks and landing on her denim jeans. 

"If he doesn't talk to his best friend about what's happening to him, who's he going to talk to?" I asked. 

"There's no one else," she said.

We sat in silence several more moments.

"How do I do that?" she asked, breaking the silence.
All I knew to say was, "Hold his hand. Tell him you love him, and say you're ready to talk."

Tears, tears, tears, tears, tears, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath. Quiet.

"I can do that. That's important."

The rest of my time with them we talked about what they already knew.

There is no death.