Life and death of friends

Around 20 years ago, my best friend ever told me he had cancer. My first thought was, "Well let’s take it to God and go from there. Let the doctors do their thing, and it’ll turn out OK."

It didn’t.

Little by little, week by week, he got weaker and sicker. I could see him slowly failing, and I knew the end was coming. I’ll never forget the day I visited and had a cup of coffee. He sat and visited. I could sense that things had changed, he was ready to move on and go to heaven. He was worn out and tired. I was angry and hurting as I left, because I knew his time was short. He had been sick for months and months, if not for years. Bad sick. The things he used to enjoy, he couldn’t anymore. He was pretty much locked in his house, which had become a prison so to speak. For him, death was heaven and freedom.

As a pastor I’ve gone through this countless times. From the sickness to the test results to the diagnosis to the treatments to the slow decline to the eventual death. There can be a miracle anywhere in the journey, and I’ve seen some wonderful miracles. Sometimes the slow decline can and might be stopped for an extended period of time, maybe years or even the rest of our natural life. But if our terminal sickness continues, we face a difficult period of time and eventual death. We don’t know the future, and we’re better off not knowing.

About three weeks ago I went out by our shop to fill the water tanks for the steers. There by the shop was a baby kitty. A tiny baby kitty! Tiny! The minute it saw Grace it boogied over to Grace to say hello and to love on her. When it saw me Kitty did the same thing, coming right up to me as fast as its little legs could peddle. Its mother, Shop Baby, is an ornery old heifer who has kicked runts out before.

Talk about weird. Shop Baby’s kitties are wilder then kites, and we’re lucky to see them, let alone have one come up to us. Baby Kitty came to us like we were long lost friends. The next morning I went out to water the steers, and Baby Kitty had spent the night in front of the shop by a tree. It needed food and a safe place to shelter where a fox couldn’t get it. Marge became the mother to Baby Kitty, so she went to bottle feeding it. It developed a cold, so we took Baby Kitty to the vet, got some meds and got some powdered cat milk and some liquid energy. We prayed for Baby Kitty and expected it to make it. (We had prayed a steer back from near death a couple weeks ago.) Baby Kitty seemed to be getting better, but instead got worse overnight. We both woke up the middle of the night, and when Marge went to feed Baby Kitty it was limp and dying. As Baby Kitty died it kept right on purring right up to its last breath. God was present!

We made a coffin and dug a resting place for Baby Kitty, and we laid it to rest. Sad! Tears! We had begun making plans for Baby Kitty to join BB, our only house cat, in the house. Marge had sworn never to have two cats in the house again, but there are exceptions. About all we could do was ask God to take care of Baby Kitty where we couldn’t. We enjoyed Baby Kitty for the time we had it, even as short as it was. We both wanted Baby Kitty to live to adulthood and die from old age, but it didn’t happen.

As we go through life we will lose friends and loved ones to accidents and sickness and old age. Cherish the time you have together as long as you can as much as you can, and if death should separate us then look forward to a grand reuniting somewhere in heaven at some point in the very near future.

Phillips began life as a cowboy, then husband and father, carpenter, a minister, gardener and writer. He may be reached at phillipsrb@hotmail.com.