Often times when you start on a long journey, the end can seem somewhere way off in the distance. It’s a lot of work to get started and sometimes the journey actually begins before you are ready to leave.
Back in February of this year, we started a journey called Cancer with mom. It was a road I had heard of but never before traveled with anyone. Now 7 months later I am a wise and weary road veteran. This has been a trail of tears – of joyous memories and sunshine days yes, but a way marked with dread and
apprehension about the end.
I’ve expected the end around every turn, but when we got around those turns, there was just another bend in the road – further down and across more rocky ground. I have found for my part the end of the road is steep. There are a lot of things hard to get over. A walker is exchanged for a wheelchair exchanged for a hospital bed in the living room in a matter of days. There’s feeding to do, turning every two hours in the bed and of course visits from the Hospice nurse.
I help bend her lifeless joints while Marcia puts years of nursing experience to personal tender use. Sisters gently bath her and brush her teeth. Dad makes
meticulous notes on every treatment and pill.
The house is as mom wants it to be in her last days or hours – full of her family.
I know Cancer takes different people down different roads. Ours has been as God planned and according to His purposes for all of us.
And as is often true with long journeys when the end seems near, everyone is ready to be there. Mom especially as she completes this journey and begins an everlasting one of much more beauty and joy.
After this last crossing, she will finally be home.
