I would be lying if I said that it’s easy to write tonight. I’ve tried three different times with three different stories and nothing is striking my fancy after ten lines or so. Nothing suits tonight. This is just the way it is sometimes with writing. Some days, I can write with a one word prompt without a pause – the words just flying on the page – and other days, like tonight, it is painful, like walking across rocks with tender feet.

The reason? Tonight is emotional for me because my sister-in-law is slipping away into death. My sweet friend who I’ve known since I was four and she was five and who has been in my family for almost thirty years. This is not a new situation. Sandra has been fighting cancer for a long time, but she’s always managed to beat it until now. At this point, her body is worn down and her defenses are gone and the doctors have said no more treatment, call hospice. Those are not the words you ever really want to hear.

But she did hear those words almost 2 months ago and she still has fought not to let this illness win. But it is winning; it will win. There is just not much more to do when you’re down to 70 pounds and not interested in food anymore.

To say I’m sad is too much to the point. I am firmly in denial, just as Sandra has been. No, she will make it one more time. No, she will not let this bring her down. No, she will survive and probably outlive me.

The truth is that all those statements are blatantly false. She will not make it this time. She will be brought down. She will not survive this and she will absolutely not survive me unless I fall victim to an accident in the next hours or day.

I can’t even begin to say how I feel about this. My capacity for hard-core denial is astonishing, particularly when it comes to Sandra. She has been a stable force in my life a long time. She has brought humor when there was nothing funny in the situation she has faced. She has insisted on a basic down-to-earth attitude regarding this illness from herself and those closest to her. There has not been time devoted to the woe-is-me sentiment that I suspect would prevail heavily if I were facing what she has faced. Alas, Sandra is a Korean war baby, adopted from an orphanage at the age of five, and that start has made her pragmatic, stoic and a person not overly impressed with less-than-responsible behavior. Except when it came to my brother, who was completely irresponsible with the help of alcohol for the first years of their marriage, then a decent and hardworking husband and father after the intervention that was organized by my mother, but required Sandra more than anybody else to say to my brother: keep up this drinking and don’t go into treatment and you will forfeit your rights as husband and father. Period. No equivocation. Just the plain simple truth. My brother heard that tone and he knew life had shifted. He went to treatment and never drank again. A miracle, pure and simple.

So, here I sit, fifteen hundred miles away, mourning the loss of my friend. I can’t make this situation be any different. I can’t change Sandra’s fate. I can’t fix the pain that her daughters will feel once their mother finally allows herself to go.

I can, though, recognize that I deeply love this woman, and I hate cancer, this “silent” killer that has stolen her middle years away.  I also know she is very tired of fighting and well she should be.

I can only surround Sandra with white protective light – her and her sweet daughters – and send my love over the airwaves.

I expect I’ll be headed to Texas for a funeral in the next days.

If there is a heaven, then my brother, George, dead now for seven years from his own cancer, will be waiting. If there isn’t one, then at least this dear sweet woman can stop her fight and rest.

As for me, I just want to offer my love to my nieces and do my best to provide support for them. They are good girls, all in their 20’s at this point, and this has been a long road for them to walk.

I believe in the cycle of life and here it is again to let me know that there is definitely something much bigger than I am.

People get ready for the train of glory…

It’s on its way and there is nobody and nothing to stop it.

That is the cycle of life.

I will hold Sandra close in my heart.

Now, it’s time to sit quietly and wait. And to know that all is as it should be. Or, more accurately, all is as it is.