Port Draw Day

The bleak grayness of the sky shrouded in a light flurry of small, frigid snowflakes matched the sadness in my heart perfectly. One more Monday morning, one more trip to the cancer center, one more port draw, one more day of agony and suffering for my Father to endure.



How difficult to discover that dying is not always easy. I sat with Michael when he died. One minute he was with us, the next, he was gone, just like that. I was with Gram Appleby when she passed, and although she had been ill for awhile as Michael had been, she was gone in a blink. I had just kissed her good night and slipped into the visitor's lounge when the nurse told me she was gone.



But this, with Dad, is not quick. It is not easy. There is no switch to pull when you are ready to move on to heaven, when you realize there is no hope for recovery. It is surely not the process of choice to linger for days, struggling for every breath, panicked at every turn, wanting to let go but unable to turn your body off.



I pull on to the expressway, tears sliding down my face, my every breath a prayer for his suffering to be alleviated. I beg God to intervene. I reason that even Jesus did not suffer for weeks. What purpose this final battle? What reason his delayed homegoing? Surely God has his timing, his design. Though I do not understand, I trust in His unfailing love for his child James.



I park on the third level of the parking garage and make my way down the elevator into the hospital and down the long corridor to the cancer center where I check in. "How are you today, Mrs. Gillie?" they ask me. "Doing OK," I reply even though everything inside me wants to say "Horrible. My Dad is dying of cancer." But it is the holidays and everyone in the cancer center has their own struggles. No sense saying out loud what some of them are facing themselves.



I suspect my blood pressure will be through the roof, but it is not. I sit in the curtained area waiting for the nurse to draw my blood, my heart aching for my Father and for my Mother as well who has lived fifty nine years married to this man. I cannot imagine what she is going through. I feel as if an aura of sadness envelopes me, half wondering if it is visible.



On the drive home, as I am praying, I put on a CD of the Canadian Brass playing Christmas music. It is just the right touch of gentle, comforting music to help me keep my heart from staying heavy. I focus instead on family and friends who surround me, on the boys who need Christmas to be good this year after dealing for months with heavy cancer stuff. I put my hand in God's and sense him wrap his arms around me, loving me, caring about Dad and Mom more deeply than I do. Everything will be OK. I wait on God.