A Vision of Beauty

On November 19, our family lost Chris Darrow to cancer. Chris was a highly intelligent animal loving chef and gamer, with a fiance and a little girl eight years old. He was 32. Thank you to all who prayed for Chris and his family. Please continue to pray as his family deals with their loss. We loved Chris and will miss him very much. We hate cancer.

Mom had a rocky weekend. When I arrived Friday night, she was animated and conversant. Saturday morning she greeted me with, "My, don't you look fresh today," which, although conversational, was quite far from reality. I left her for a few minutes and when I returned she was no longer talking. She ate her breakfast in silence, then fell asleep. Bill and Pattie stopped by in the afternoon, and she was unresponsive. We visited while Mom slept. Her silence continued for the rest of the day, until the evening when we changed her nightgown and bedding. She responded to questions a little, then fell asleep again.

Sunday morning I woke up to Mom talking to herself. I said, "Well, good morning!" To which she replied, "When did you get here?" The rest of the morning was full of conversation broken up with brief naps. For both of us.

In the late afternoon before Corey and I left for Grand Rapids, I read to Mom from Peace Like a River and the book of love poems. Mom's favorite love poem this week was by Ben Jonson, entitled A Vision of Beauty. She soaked it up completely. I asked if she wanted me to read it again, and she said, "Oh, I don't know if I can stand it!" I asked her if I should take that as a yes, and she affirmed. We read a couple more, and she became so overwhelmed by the romance that we decided to return to the story book. But after a little while, we put the story down and went back to the poetry.

(Mom with Suzy, November 23, 2008)

From the beginning of Mom's diagnosis we have had a sense of the preciousness of this time together. Losing Chris these past few days has underscored the importance of holding our loved ones close, living a life of gratitude, not taking our time together for granted.