An update on Grandpa Ladish:
The results of his recent P.E.T. scan went as well as honestly expected. Which was not well, at least by most established social and familial standards.
The verdict: The cancer has spread too much throughout his stomach, into his pancreas, liver, and up into his esophagus, for the proposed surgery to be worthwhile, or even effective. While in this case real news is better than sugar-coated news, the results of the consultation remain bittersweet at best.
Sweet, because it means my grandpa won’t have to suffer the emotional and physical strains of undergoing the originally proposed radical surgery; he won’t have to be bed-ridden for any extended period of time; he won’t have to dwell on the “what-ifs?” surrounding the implications of electing to forego the surgery, which, as he admitted to me prior to the consultation, would have been his course of action regardless of the surgeons and specialists deeming the procedure effective.
Bitter, because the surgeons and specialists involved in the consultation estimated my grandpa is now working with a meager six-month timeline.
Striking me at this particular moment is the unprecedented gift of love. More specifically, the amazing amount of love one person can possess for another, and how this love alone can blissfully blur the edges of life, all the while holding to the undercurrent of truth that we’ve never been promised unlimited time; we’ve never been promised an endless view through rose-colored lenses.
Loving another means you are willingly subjecting yourself to the deepest level of emotional vulnerability. It also means you are accepting the greatest benefaction offered in this life.
When considering the plenitude of painful moments unmistakably connected to the complexly joyful package of loving another person, it seems sad to even begin to think love worth trading for the proposed “safety” found in emotional and relational detachment. Everyone loves at some point in their life, and everyone who loves will also lose, yes, but truly loving will always bolster the scales against any previous or forthcoming loss. Always.
Love is what gives strength, breeds hope, provides a sense of purpose to this otherwise seemingly senseless world.
The world can shift in the briefest of moments, the monotony of daily living suddenly disrupted, replaced with the repudite realization that the only aspect of life that now matters centers upon simply loving those we can and do for as long as humanly allowed. Savoring precious time.
Losing someone close to you, or in this case, the promise of losing someone, makes you stand face-to-face with your true affection for them. And if it isn’t love, then saying goodbye doesn’t necessarily hurt.
This hurts. And I’m glad.