Fast or Slow Which Way to Go ?

Fast or slow, which way to go? Sounds like how to take the turn during a NASCAR race, or going down the PIG Trail, maybe even learning how to roller skate, skateboarding down the hill. It just seems like a perfectly simple question until it comes out of the mouth of your dying husband just as you lay your head down to close your eyes to go to sleep.

An exhausted sleep I might add, so ready to rest, oh please GOD, did I hear that right. Really now LORD! It's just like you to ask me to discuss this topic when I can barely keep my head above water and now YOU open the floodgate.

Ok, GOD, this is what I get. Here I am drooping eyes, praying for rest and now all at once my eyes are popping out of my head. This day has been anything but easy. I have just spent the last 3 hours sitting in the floor with D waiting for him to decide to get out of the floor and back into bed. It's what we do every night, no big deal, but tiring anyway. I have had to deal with government tax agencies who can't find paperwork for the past business quarter who are asking me to reconcile their mistakes. Have filed taxes and payments the same way for the past 16 years (why me- why now - why not me - why not now ). Then there were the visitors, well meaning visitors who are so ill placed in front of death they actually are physically ill. They have to do their "duty call". They mean well, truly, but they speak as if D isn't in the room, act like he is anything but capable of seeing them when he is looking right at them and talk above him like he is totally stupid. Or the relatives who think that because they see D in a wheelchair up and talking he is now "healed" and going to walk away from all this.

THANK YOU JESUS HE IS !

Then in the quiet of the night, lights out - my sweet, sweet husband whispers to me "fast or slow? Which way do you think is the easy way to die? Do you think it is easier to die fast like Bo did or slow like I am? This hanging and around and dying is really tiring?" All this from a man who a few short weeks ago could barely form words. What was odd is that just before Ian left he had said to Jill and I " Papaw can really speak much clearer tonight, he is using a lot more words"
An eight year old who notices these things.

Someone asks Jill which was harder having her brother die quick or watching her Dad die slow? We talked about that and there is really no choice but as I think back to my answer I realize how selfish it was especially after hearing D tonight. With Bo, it was quick, like ripping a bandaid off a wound - after the initial sting and the reality of what had happened, you begin to heal, the air hits the wound, cooling the stinging burn of the terrible pain you just felt. As time goes on, the wound heals, you never notice where the bandaid was, but the wound is always there just below the surface ready to be reopened and fresh pain felt at any moment.

With D the wound is open sore, oozing, seeping wound that no amount of medicine can heal. It is present in every step he takes, every pound of flesh he loses, every word he can't speak. In the purple, rotten flesh of his toes from lack of oxygen to the wasting of the muscles in the arms and legs. This wound can't be covered by a bandaid. No amount of love, nurturing, sweet kisses, gentle back rubs, tears and those all important prayers can change the fact that a non-healing wound is sometimes more difficult to treat than the removal of a bandaid. The sting may last longer because this wound has taken longer to form therefore taking longer to heal.

Which way to go Fast or Slow? We don't have the answer, but we put our FAITH in the one who does. HE and He alone knows why one went one way and one the other. It is not ours to reason why, but it is ours to know that HE is and always will be the ALPHA and OMEGA !