My friend Susan in Houston....the one I met on AOL in a weight loss message board...the person I connected with amidst all the others....will one day soon bury her 15 year old son. It is a useless death.
His brain tumor came at the start of October 2006. The past year has been such a blur for everyone involved. Zach is such a normal young man. He played the bass drum in his high school marching band. He is a gorgeous dark haired young man. There is no reason he should be dying. But he is.
Zach started having headaches and dizziness in the heat of the Texas sun and everyone chalked it up to dehydration. I remember the phone call from his Mom telling me she was worried about him and had taken him to the doctor for tests. When Zach started vomiting when he woke up first thing in the morning, her doctor told her to take him straight to the emergency room for a cat scan. The scan revealed the worst possible news....a brain tumor. 1.5 cm of sheer death in the most terrible of places, the brain stem. Medullablastoma. Such a shock for the whole family.
What do you say when someone tells you this piece of shit news? All I could do was be strong for my friend. I offered to update his Carepage for the family so that they could share news of his condition to friends near and far. This I did gladly, feeling thankful I could so SOMETHING from all the way up here in Seattle. I wanted to hop on a plane and just be there for them in any way I could. Susan wouldn't have it and I didn't want her southern manners to be overly concerned about being the perfect hostess to me during my time there. So I did what I knew I could do.
I let her cry, and listened, and made myself available night and day, sent gift baskets, offered suggestions on how to coordinate sleep schedules and make Zach a little more comfortable. I made sure I could always be the safe friend she could share her anger and frustrations with, as well as the friend she could tell her deepest sorrows to. I tried to fill her mind with hope and truth and reality that might make just one second of her life bearable. That was all I could do. And now the cancer is back and he is dying.
After all the surgeries, chemo, radiation and therapies, the cancer is back and stronger than before. It has spread to his spine. New tumor has regrown inside the place his old tumor had sat for God knows how long, and it's bigger than ever. The doctors are trying another round of chemo, but they have told Zach's parents that he will only live for a few more months. A few more months. How can they go on living?
It isn't natural to bury you children. The laws of nature seem out of whack just thinking about it. There is nothing I can say to ease the pain they will bear for the rest of their lives. A vital, vibrant young man will not have the chance to marry and become a parent himself. He will not be able to march with the band one more time. He will have to put his own mind around the fact that he is going to die soon.....at 15 years of age. 15. All I can do is cry and share the incredible sadness and despair his parents feel. It isn't right or fair or natural. Life. Too short.
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