"Too Close To Home - Part II"

Some times I suspect that this nondescript attempt at lucid thought is becoming too introverted...too serious...too taciturn, thinking that what few folks who happen to stumble upon its existence will be turned off by the downward cast of its reflection. The always persistent question then surfaces, "For whom am I writing this for?" In all genuine candor I would wish that my random thoughts on random subjects would at worse be entertaining and, at best, accepted on a deeper level as being worthy of a reader's additonal contemplation. Reality dictates that degrees of approval and acceptance are as fickled and as compricious as there are individuals of like temperament. In the final analysis, if I am to continue this enterprise, I should, if not must, remain uncompromisingly steadfast to the principles and ideals in which I hold as "self-evident" of my worth as a thinking and caring human being. Perhaps Mr. Shakespeare said it best, "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thous canst not then be false to any man."

That having been determined, I must again return to a subject that grieves me deeply: the worsening phyiscal deterioration of my employer's twenty-eight year old daughter, she being diagnosed with terminal cancer of the brain. In all candor I grieve more for her father, my boss and friend, than I expend in equal measure for his daughter, Jennifer. This is honestly revealed not because I do not wish that there was some power on earth combined with the healing power of Heaven to remove this dire affliction from this young woman. I would have her, were it in my power to do so, to live to the ripe old age of a doting grandparent. It is this deeper degree of grief that I feel for her Dad, he being a man of life-long determination to tackel and conquer any adversity which heretofore has beset his path. I observe him now to being pulled steadily downward to a helpless and defeated mass of confusion and dejection, being unable, when it otherwise would be of the utmost importance, to eradicate a situation for the one person who means the very most to him. What words of comfort and understanding can I possibly impart that would ease his breaking heart? Indeed, are there even words yet coined that can even begin to express such profound and emphathic consoling of one soul to another? If there are, I have yet to adopt them as my own.

I learned a long time ago in one of my first creative writing courses that one should abstain from writing on any subject in which one has insufficient knowledge to expound upon. The subjects of dying and death are two such topics of which I have to date but a passing aquaintance. I would prefer that to be the case in all aspects of my life yet to be lived. But that is not to be. I have a friend who is losing a daughter far, far too soon. I can but in part share from a distance his growing grief and reveal to him the nobility of the human spirit as I attempt in some small and meaningful ways to faithfully demonstrate that his sadness is likewise internalized as only one father to another can possibly fathom. Life most certainly will go forward, but the emptiness of losing a precious child shall pierce the tearful heart forever more. I wish it were not so.