Reflection: One Month

On the day that Kyle was diagnosed with cancer, the 
sun rising over beautiful and majestic Mt Olympus in my
backyard made the sky literally glow pink.  

Splashes of pink smeared liberally across the already
blue skies and the soft golden light of morning.

I thought of the old saying my mother used to tell
us all the time growing up...

"Pink skies in the morning are a sailors warning"

(The inverse of which would be "Pink skies at 
night are a sailors delight.")

Now I am not one who see signs in anything really
or looks for "meaning" in things beyond what they really
are.

That said, for some reason on that day driving up
for a liver biopsy, the thought flitted through my
mind, "pink skies in the morning are a warning--we're
going to get bad news today."

I already had a deep seeded fear inside my heart that
something was decidedly wrong with Kyle anyway and
for some reason the skies that day nudged me more
toward the bad news that did indeed follow.

It wasn't a magical sign from God or the universe.
It just was.  And it just stuck in my brain that day.

Fast forward to Wednesday December 24, 2014. 

For days Kyle had been defying the odds and living
for "one more day" when all his blood counts were
pretty much incompatible with an actual human being
staying alive.

Somehow he would go to sleep and wake up one more day.

That morning I left the hospital in the neighborhood
of 3:30 a.m., hesitant to leave lest he should die, yet
my poor body was screaming at me after 5 days with pretty 
much no sleep to go and get "some rest".

"Some rest" meant two hours of sleep and then a shower
and a drive back to IMC and the 8th floor where Kyle
lay in his hospital bed.

As I got in my car at around 6 a.m., the skies across
the valley were once again a breathtaking pink hue.

Shimmering with the promise of a new day and all it
would bring.

I sighed as I drove the now familiar route to the
hospital, Christmas music playing absurdly in the back round,
and thought again, "pink skies, sailors warning....
Kyle will indeed die today."

Now not to give myself too much credit for "predicting"
his day of death, I had had this thought almost every day
for the days leading up to December 24. 

We all had.

We all wondered what day would be "the day."

But signs of his impending death were coming swifter
and faster and his body was shutting down and he
was slipping away slowly, but surely, from us the 
people who loved him most.

I will always treasure those last days in the hospital
as some of the most beautiful days of my life. 

There was a love that filled every corner of his 
hospital room for every moment he was there.

He was constantly surrounded by people who loved him

He was always being touched and held by family and friends.

He made us laugh and he made us cry and those memories
are most tender in my heart.

I will not lie (have I ever?) and say it's been easy.

In fact, Kyle's death has knocked the wind out of my
sails.  I am more sad than I ever thought possible.

Kyle always told me "Dor there is NO way to prepare for
the time when I'm dead."

In that, he was right.

However, I will say that in all the darkest fears about 
how this would be in my heart (his death and my 
continuing life) I am right.  I was right when I told
him how hard it would be.

It is hard.

The degree to which we ALL miss him in our home and family
is beyond description.

CS Lewis writes that "the death of a loved one is like
an amputation" and how very right he is.

There will always be the ghost of the limb that was once
Kyle in our lives. We will grasp for it and him, only to
have it be just beyond our reach and be that phantom limb
that we can feel and see in our hearts, but not in our
reality anymore.

There is no good answer, we know.  There is no magic pill
and no easy way out, but through.

Through all of this messy stuff called living 
and dying and grieving.

And so we wake up each day and try to get through.

Some days are easier than others and some days we
lay together on my bed and just weep and weep.

And both of those, the "okay days" and the "weeping days"
and anything else we feel, are all okay.

Today when I woke up, remembering it was the 
one month anniversary, the skies were not pink.  

In fact they were the typical Salt Lake City
hideous awful gray inversion post apocalyptic Utah winter
skies, with no sun in place at all and no pink or blue
or anything at all other than shades of gray.

How perfectly fitting on this day I thought.

And that's what I've got for today, reflections.