Sad start to summer

My dear friend and colleague, who likes to go by Madame X on my blog, lost her father on Wednesday.  He had only been ill for about four weeks.  It started as a UTI and pneumonia, which they treated with antibiotics, but then they discovered liver lesions and diagnosed it as cancer.  He went downhill very quickly.  They never did kick the infection, and they never discovered where the cancer originated (rarely does cancer start in the liver, and his was no exception), but they named the cause of death as metastatic liver cancer.  Her family will not have an autopsy done because, I think, they're just exhausted.  This is sobering to me, because Madame X is not yet 37, just one year older than my own younger sister.  I know death can strike at any time, but it's weird when your close friend loses a parent. 

I had a student in my AP class this year lose his mother just two weeks before school ended.  She had fought cancer for over 13 years, but after beating it so many times, she lost this round.  He didn't make a big deal about it;  in fact, he didn't really want a lot of people to know.  I only learned about it in the final personal essay I had them write.  It explained why he'd looked like such hell lately, and why he had missed several days of class after a year of essentially perfect attendance.  How do you comfort a kid who's less than half your age and experiencing a pain you can only imagine in your nightmares?  All I could do was hug him;  at least I'm good at those. 

POM's sister continues her own battle with cancer on multiple staging grounds.  Her long-term forced relationship with steroids (to reduce swelling in the brain where gamma knife surgery removed a tumor -- twice) has caused her to blow up like a human balloon.  This once stringbean blond looks like a perpetually pregnant air-filled weeble.  And like a weeble, she keeps bouncing back up after every punch.  Her faith astonishes me daily.  She lives for her five kids, the oldest of whom just graduated from junior high and the youngest of whom is starting preschool.  She's just come off the steroids, a development she's thrilled about, but despite good news about no more brain tumor, she's weathering bad news about her liver and lungs, where innumerable active cancer sites are now present in spite of the chemo round she just finished. 

Our only role in these situations is one of support -- praying, being a conduit of information to other pray-ers around the world, filling in where a babysitter or chauffeur or photographer or hugger is needed.  It never feels like enough.