Three years ago, I sent a random post to a programming forum asking if anyone could put me up while I relocated to Queensland, Australia as my wife closed our affairs down south in Victoria.  A programmer who knew me only by my name and sarcastic comments responded by opening his home to me – only after his wife spoke to my wife to ensure I was not a threat to their two boys.  Apparently, my wife was convincing enough to persuade them to set up me up in their spare room during our transition.

I shared many experiences with this family over subsequent months.  I taught the eldest son to iron his first shirt, finished the Lord of the Rings game on the Xbox with the younger son, and introduced the family to M&M poker in which I saw (and mis-called) the only natural royal straight flush I will likely see in my lifetime.  For a few months, I called their family mine, and they welcomed me in theirs. 

On a recent Sunday past, I shared in another experience that is part of being family, holding the hand of the mom as she spent her last Valentine’s Day with us before cancer took her three days later, hours away from her 46^th birthday.   

The smile

The realities of cancer are ugly. One in eight women develop breast cancer in their lifetime, and 20 percent of those are the type that played out before us in the room on Valentine’s.  Cancer and the treatment of the cancer had ravaged her body.  The whites of her eyes were yellow and her skin a deep shade of brown from the jaundice resulting from a destroyed liver.  This once strong and dominant woman was now mere skin and bones, barely able to move. 

Yet this is not the reason why I was overcome with emotion and unable to speak by her bedside.  I accept pain and suffering as facts of life and look upon death as a transition rather than an end.  Rather, I wipe away tears as I write this post on the train ride into work because of the memory of the smile this special woman had on her face when we visited.

In my mind’s eye, the sunken cheeks and hairless scalp are a contrasting painted set behind the lead actor of the smile shining out from an understanding of what was likely her last Sunday with us.  That smile was beautiful in a way that words cannot describe.  The smile conveyed an emotion that is simply experienced rather than described, like happening upon the ideal sunset or witnessing the final closing number to a perfectly executed symphony or play.

Hope

During her journey with cancer, this woman had a physical experience she could only attribute to something outside of herself.  This personal revelation began her relationship with and hunger for God that expressed itself in a tangible difference in the person I had come to know well.  I saw hints of cynicism replaced with innocence, uncertainty replaced with peace, fear replaced with hope. 

It is this hope that I am still challenged to understand.  I am, by nature, overly optimistic.  Personality and strength tests rank my attribute of “Hope and Optimism” off the charts.  This is expressed in an ability to cast vision, motivate towards future goals, and see the full potential in those I work with.  However, my concept of hope is but a pale shadow to that which I saw in this woman. 

Her hope was beyond a desperate plea for physical healing.  Indeed, she had a firm grasp on the situation.  In the same hospital visit that she shared a poem she wrote about the hope she had, she asked me to continue to be a part of her family in the increasingly likely event the treatment was not successful.  She spoke of healing and purpose that were in a separate dimension to the reality of her physical prognosis.

I find my version of “hope” is a general assurance that everything will turn out right, adopting the Australian axiom of “she’ll be right, mate”.  This is empty in comparison to the hope expressed through her life and her smile visit after visit, even to the final week.  Having walked with her through the experience and reflecting on my 37 years, I am fairly confident that I have seen nothing as beautiful as what I saw in this woman’s life.

I look forward to fulfilling her request as I continue to share in the family I discovered through an off-hand email years ago.  I will take with me a memory of a woman who I feel truly “got it”, beyond lip service, beyond rhetoric, who grabbed onto a personal experience and relationship and never looked back.

My story I leave with you to do as you please.  Her final poem I leave with you to respect.  I am finding both of these challenge my preconceptions of healing, plans, purpose, and hope.