When Hope Seems Lost

A friend recently remarked to me that doctors are a lot like juries.  You can tell that there's a death sentence, because they won't meet your gaze.  I thought about it for a few moments, when I realized that strictly speaking from the literature, it's true.  The eyes are often called windows to the soul and even from a secular point of view, they're the most likely part of the body to betray an emotion.  Back before West Virginia did away with the death penalty, my late grandfather sat on a jury that had to make that decision.  In the end, they found they could not bring themselves to end the life of a man, even if that man had taken another.

I called my mother to tell her excitedly I finished a book I had to read on teaching.  She was happy for me, but, she had bad news.  My friend had prompted me unknowingly to ask how mom's college roommate's husband was doing, if there had been any updates to his Caringbridge site.  He's on his fourth or fifth go with cancer.  The news isn't good.  Two to three weeks if he's lucky.  There might be a fungal infection that's spread to the brain, they're not sure yet.

He had his faults, trust me.  He could be egotistical and had an affair; what I'm saying is, he was human, or is human rather, he's not dead yet.  He's smart, he's a partner in a medical firm, he's rich, he's got a wife and two daughters and by any measure of secularity, he's successful.  All the material wealth in the world can't buy him his life though.  In these last few months, he's made it seemingly his quest, from my outsider's perspective, to make sure his family will go on without him.  Even before he was diagnosed again, he was out car shopping with his wife, wanting her to replace a not too old vehicle with unusual vehemence; I think that was the point where he knew that he was sick again and that this time, he'd not be escaping.

In this book I've had to read, "What the Best College Teachers Do" there are suggestions across a number of topic areas.  One professor they frequently bring up is a teacher at a prestigious medical school.  In her introductory class, one of her lectures always begins with the same question to her students, "What are you going to do when you have to tell someone and their family, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do?"  Similarly in my own field, we teach our kids the theories and practices that they'll need to know, but neither we, nor their police academies, will teach them how to deal with the loss of a colleague.  Sure, it's not as likely to be needed as a doctor who will, without doubt, have to tell a person they're going to die, but it can still come up; in my own life and career, it has already come up. 

I had an acquaintance named Derek who got a U.S. Marshals internship we were both competing for.  It rolled over, as planned, into a position as a Deputy Marshal once he passed his FLETC training.  Then, this past year, he was covering another Deputy Marshal's shift so the man could spend some time with his family.  He went with a team to arrest a drug dealer on federal charges and took a shotgun blast as he went through the door, killing him instantly.  His assailant, the man he had come to arrest, was shot dead immediately after by a state trooper acting on instinct.  I wandered the next few days through life in a fugue.  We had never been close, but someone I knew had been killed in the line of duty. 

In our increasingly secular society, we're told that once you're dead, you're worm food and that it's.  But when hope seems lost, we, as Christians, can rely on the fact that we have a hope in life after death.  Christ died for us and it is up to us to accept that grace.  It is up to us to have that relationship with him.  It is up to us to keep maintaining that relationship as we work out our fate with fear and trembling as the Apostle Paul put it. 

Both these men, Derek who is no longer on this earthly plane, and Jeff, who is not long for this world, believe in that life in the world to come.  It informed Derek's interactions with others just as it has Jeff's.  But where Derek died quickly, Jeff must come to peace with his slow death, and over the years, I believe his faith has allowed him to do that.  When all hope seems lost, we see a great Light, that of Christ.  He has overcome what we could not. 

I can only hope that one day, hopefully far in the future, when my turn comes to shuffle off this mortal coil, I can do so as much in the arms of Christ and with the dignity of these two men.  I'll miss you when you pass Jeff, but I hope to see you again one day after taking what Peter Pan said must be an awfully big adventure.  I just pray that it's no time soon, I have a lot of life left to live.