Job 1:21
[For we came into this world naked, and will leave naked. The Lord gives, and He takes away...]
Maybe you haven't heard. On Sunday at 7:30 my best friend Shane Patsell was hit from behind by a truck while riding his motorcycle home from the shop that fixed his transmission. I saw him two days before and he said he was getting his bike back and he sounded happy. This was the last thing I remember him saying to me.
He's in the fourth floor ICU ward at Riverside Hospital with a C1 fracture and a severed spinal cord. He can't talk or breathe on his own. Monday evening the doctors had been given the word to take him off life support. But then he woke up. Well, opened his eyes. He didn't know what was going on, and they had to give him morphine for the confusion. I doubt he's in any sort of pain. The doctors call it a "locked-in state" which is when you can hear and understand what's going on around you, and think and feel, but not really respond, except he blinks sometimes and follows people around the room with his eyes. His mother is always there, and in the four days he's been allowed visitors god knows how many people have come to see him. The waiting room is full of them sometimes.
Our unit commander, because Shane and me have worked together for three years, even in Kuwait, hardly sleeps because of all the things he has to do for his family, and making arrangements for, well, a memorial service. Today he came up to me and said that I should go see him if I can. I don't think he knows that Shane and me are even best friends. It's because we don't talk at work hardly ever, but mostly hang around the barracks and drink. I wouldn't like beer that much without Shane.
Shane isn't going to be around much longer. People say you never know what could happen, and to hope for a miracle. Okam's razor says never to assume more things exist than is necessary. And people hope for a lot of things that don't come. They're not stupid, but they spend too much time thinking about situations that won't happen because noone wants to deal with the fact that he's going to die. Except me. Except his mother. And except Shane.
Shane likes my attitude. He said I'm too optimistic, and even when stuff was really bad he wondered how I could always smile, or why I would deal with situations I don't have to in ways that most people don't. Some people get angry and act rashly and I don't, and Shane likes that about me, and that I can joke about things and laugh even when the chips are down. No, I'm not alright with my best friend dying. But that's not my choice. And he's wrong, because I'm not an optimist - I'm a pragmatist who understands that there's nothing to hate or fear about life, and that it is a wonderful and beautiful thing even when really bad things happen.
I won't ask God why this is happening, and I don't pray that everything will get suddenly better. It's hubris to presume to know or be able to change the mind of God. What I do if I decide to say anything is "thank you. thank you for this wonderful person who enriched so many lives, and thank you that he has the chance to see that everybody is here now and that he knows how much everybody cares about him before he lets go."
When machines are breathing for you there's no reason not to accept what's going on, and what's going to happen. There's also no grief. Grief is for the living, who lose things while they are alive. Paolo Coelho, in "Warrior of Light" says to [distinguish between what is transient and what is permanent.] We will lose everything we ever had when we die, if not before. And it's fine to be sad, to mourn and to cry. God knows I'm exhausted from doing it and even more exhausted from being "strong" (which is to say, when someone deals with things well they are assumed to be emotionally strong when really they are no more susceptible to emotion than anyone else, only they appreciate, embrace, and let things in life be the way they are) for other people who are doing it.
Maybe that's why I can sound detached. I'm too tired to tell everyone how lonely I feel, and how much I want to just curl up in a corner and not come out. But I'm not too tired to be realistic. And what I'm really asking is that everybody just understand what is happening in my life right now so that you all know why I might sound and act the way I have been and will be.
For all that Job loved God for, it was not the things he was given in life but that he was given life, and that is our gift to give again to anyone we choose. Satan was allowed to take Job's wealth and family, his reputation, etc. but God said "harm not Job". A man of faith doesn't believe in miracles because that's betting on the partiality, the odds, of grace. A man of faith puts his life into another's hands out of love, expecting nothing, but believing entirely that his faith is its own grace, that love is what is eternal.
For Shane, soon to be at peace no longer with us, but always my friend.
Maybe you haven't heard. On Sunday at 7:30 my best friend Shane Patsell was hit from behind by a truck while riding his motorcycle home from the shop that fixed his transmission. I saw him two days before and he said he was getting his bike back and he sounded happy. This was the last thing I remember him saying to me.
He's in the fourth floor ICU ward at Riverside Hospital with a C1 fracture and a severed spinal cord. He can't talk or breathe on his own. Monday evening the doctors had been given the word to take him off life support. But then he woke up. Well, opened his eyes. He didn't know what was going on, and they had to give him morphine for the confusion. I doubt he's in any sort of pain. The doctors call it a "locked-in state" which is when you can hear and understand what's going on around you, and think and feel, but not really respond, except he blinks sometimes and follows people around the room with his eyes. His mother is always there, and in the four days he's been allowed visitors god knows how many people have come to see him. The waiting room is full of them sometimes.
Our unit commander, because Shane and me have worked together for three years, even in Kuwait, hardly sleeps because of all the things he has to do for his family, and making arrangements for, well, a memorial service. Today he came up to me and said that I should go see him if I can. I don't think he knows that Shane and me are even best friends. It's because we don't talk at work hardly ever, but mostly hang around the barracks and drink. I wouldn't like beer that much without Shane.
Shane isn't going to be around much longer. People say you never know what could happen, and to hope for a miracle. Okam's razor says never to assume more things exist than is necessary. And people hope for a lot of things that don't come. They're not stupid, but they spend too much time thinking about situations that won't happen because noone wants to deal with the fact that he's going to die. Except me. Except his mother. And except Shane.
Shane likes my attitude. He said I'm too optimistic, and even when stuff was really bad he wondered how I could always smile, or why I would deal with situations I don't have to in ways that most people don't. Some people get angry and act rashly and I don't, and Shane likes that about me, and that I can joke about things and laugh even when the chips are down. No, I'm not alright with my best friend dying. But that's not my choice. And he's wrong, because I'm not an optimist - I'm a pragmatist who understands that there's nothing to hate or fear about life, and that it is a wonderful and beautiful thing even when really bad things happen.
I won't ask God why this is happening, and I don't pray that everything will get suddenly better. It's hubris to presume to know or be able to change the mind of God. What I do if I decide to say anything is "thank you. thank you for this wonderful person who enriched so many lives, and thank you that he has the chance to see that everybody is here now and that he knows how much everybody cares about him before he lets go."
When machines are breathing for you there's no reason not to accept what's going on, and what's going to happen. There's also no grief. Grief is for the living, who lose things while they are alive. Paolo Coelho, in "Warrior of Light" says to [distinguish between what is transient and what is permanent.] We will lose everything we ever had when we die, if not before. And it's fine to be sad, to mourn and to cry. God knows I'm exhausted from doing it and even more exhausted from being "strong" (which is to say, when someone deals with things well they are assumed to be emotionally strong when really they are no more susceptible to emotion than anyone else, only they appreciate, embrace, and let things in life be the way they are) for other people who are doing it.
Maybe that's why I can sound detached. I'm too tired to tell everyone how lonely I feel, and how much I want to just curl up in a corner and not come out. But I'm not too tired to be realistic. And what I'm really asking is that everybody just understand what is happening in my life right now so that you all know why I might sound and act the way I have been and will be.
For all that Job loved God for, it was not the things he was given in life but that he was given life, and that is our gift to give again to anyone we choose. Satan was allowed to take Job's wealth and family, his reputation, etc. but God said "harm not Job". A man of faith doesn't believe in miracles because that's betting on the partiality, the odds, of grace. A man of faith puts his life into another's hands out of love, expecting nothing, but believing entirely that his faith is its own grace, that love is what is eternal.
For Shane, soon to be at peace no longer with us, but always my friend.