At least he went down swinging.

I lost a fellow soldier this week. On September 30th, my dear sister-in-law from South Carolina
suffered the loss of her brother, Jay's, partner. These two guys had been together for longer than most marriages. They had built a long, successful and pristine life together on the outskirts of Charlotte, and even though we had not seen a lot of each other over the past few years, they have always been part of the family and I know Jay had been keeping up with me and my progress over the last few years.

When my younger brother called two weeks ago to tell me that there was trouble, that Jay's partner was in the hospital, that is was some sort of acute lymphatic leukemia and, for a chance at survival, that they were going for high dose chemo and bone marrow transplant, I knew what terrible, terrible things they were all in for. You all know from reading my entry "The Touch" how truly, awfully sick one gets in the brutal process of marrow implantation. It is nothing but ugly. Whether it be from your own stem cells or a donor match, the high doses of chemotherapy are enough to kill you. And they did.

When I got the e-mail from my sister-in-law on Monday that he had lapsed into a coma and been put on life support and the family had been called in, I called Jay and left him a message.
Because I knew at that moment, he had to be re-thinking every decision the two of them had made together over the last month. He was probably regretting that they didn't just skip the treatments and give his partner whatever time he had left to die at home. So I left a voice mail for him to let him know this: at least he went down swinging.

For those of you who have been fortunate not to ever have to be faced with a cancer diagnosis,
to hear the awful words, to have to look at your life, cut short, on charts, scans and test results,
you will not be able to understand the significance of the end of the last paragraph. I feel, that no matter what you've been told, no matter how badly the deck is stacked against you and what the odds are, you have to fight. You have to do battle with the enemy. To try and fail is sad.
To not try at all and still get the same results, to me would be the worst thing of all. So as I left Jay the message, I said I was sorry for the terrible turn this was taking, but mostly I talked about how much I admired their courage. The courage to face the fire. The courage to stare at a terrifying beast and say, "I might only have a 5% chance of beating you, but that's better than no chance at all." The courage to be a soldier in the battlefield instead of a passivist hugging a tree.
For many, many reasons that I will not get into, the courage it took for Jay's partner to say "bring it on" and "we have to try" is phenomenal, monumental....supernatural.

He did not make it through the second round, his body giving up long before his spirit. He died Tuesday at 10:30 am. When I talk to Jay again, I will talk to him about regret. Not regret in the fact that they tried, but the awful regret that he, the survivor, would have to live with from here on out had they not. That overwhelming "what if" that would have come with taking the passive route and not the treatment decision. That constant looking back and wondering if perhaps his partner could have been in the 5% group. That maybe he would have been one to make it through and recover and live a few more months or years or who knows? I will tell him that living with the regret that they had chosen to do nothing but succumb would be so far more haunting that living with regret that his last days were physically miserable. You never, ever want to look back and think "we should have done more." It is so much better to say "we did everything we could."

So my message here today to anyone who has made these tough, sometimes unthinkable-in-scale decisions and ended up losing someone is to always, always honor the memory by honoring that decision....honor the courage......honor that faith. Don't regret it! There is so much more to be said for swinging at the ball and missing than standing there and watching the perfectly thrown pitch come at you and not swinging at all.

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." 2 Timothy 4:7