how sudden

[kimblanchard]

I ran into my stats professor from last year in the hall today. I have posted about him before, but the short story is that his wife passed away between two and three weeks ago from lung cancer. She was diagnosed about two and a half years ago, and she had been unable to work for many months. Becky taught her classes on Thursday and would have on Friday except for a doctor's appointment before dying on Sunday.

In talking to him today, I was stunned by how sudden death is. I knew it was in our case. Becky's death was not surprising, per se, she had been diagnosed for over a year and nothing had worked to shrink that tumor. But it was very sudden. She was in the hospital bed and we were talking about a project she had just graded for her students, and an hour later she was unconcious, and another hour later she was gone.

The story was obviously so different for them, and yet when I talked to him today, I could see how sudden her death had been for him. I don't know why that should have been surprising, but it was. Please do keep him and his boys in your prayers with all of the rest of us during this holiday season.

I guess it just goes to show the importance of our physical presence. In the last few months, Becky grew very angry with her body as it betrayed her. I never could share that anger, because I loved that body. Her mind, heart, and soul, too, even more for those things, but that body, too. I can still feel her surrounding me. She is a part of me and always will be, but she will not wake up beside me anymore. She will not hold me to her chest as I cry again. I could not separate her from that form. I still cannot.

I miss that physical presence in my life. I need that love which rejected barriers emotional or physical. The thought of living without that indefinitely just numbs me, it scares me so much.

Curtis