I wrote this while caring for my nephew Marco during his last days. Marco was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, a malignant, inoperable, and aggressive form of brain tumor, in January 2009, and he passed away August 16, 2009, in Solothurn, Switzerland, three days before his 25th birthday. These might have been his thoughts…
The first thing you notice as you enter my disconcertingly quiet room is the severity and finality of the lighting. The rays of the early morning sun create a splendidly surreal and false sense of peacefulness and calm which is magnified a thousand times by the smell of death. My formerly delicate and handsome face is grotesquely swollen and contorted by the well-meant yet cruel administration of evil, un-healing drugs, my recently still sculpted and athletic body is withered and bloated all at once, and I am beyond recognition to most but my closest friends and family.
My now rarely open eyes dart back and forth and then come to rest at a place in time and space unimaginably difficult to comprehend. They beg the unanswerable questions “why me, why now, why this way?”, and they slowly close not because answers have been found but because of the sheer and vast exhaustion these thoughts have brought along.
I sporadically wake to find myself being gently manipulated, turned, washed, and caressed which I find fabulously relaxing and excruciatingly painful, and I see foggy shadows that exude love and pain and pity and hopelessness. Their distant eyes beg the unanswerable questions “why him, why now, why this way?”, and I slip away for a while not to avoid the begging, not because I don’t want to be with them forever but because the decision has been made.
Days have come and gone but I feel today is a special day. I’m totally unclear why and yet I’m absolutely sure that I will find peace today. I try to wake up to tell my untiringly watchful and selflessly caring family how much their presence means to me, how lucky I feel to know that they are here, and how much I will miss them. I feel no pain but I can feel their pain, I feel much love for them and I feel tremendously loved by them. There are moments where I just don’t want to go and there are others where I feel ready to move on, to leave my tortured body, and save my invincible soul for yet another chance.
The end doesn’t come easy, as it rarely does, and I give it all to not linger so as to not prolong the suffering of my devastated loved ones. They want me to stay with all their might yet they want me to go painlessly and gently, and I try to do both without at first realizing that both is not an option in my limited capacity, just as their wishes can not be fulfilled, not now, not ever. Suddenly, I feel no need to struggle anymore, a gentle pull let’s me slip across the dreaded line into utter bliss and sweet painlessness, and I am smiling as I leave my past in search of my future.
