News, Views, & Interviews

Eighteen to 24 months. That’s what Chris’s doctor told him exactly 26 months ago tomorrow. This thing had snuck up on everyone. At 45 years of age, no one was really looking for it. My brother-in-law went through some weight loss, he figured he’d been watching his diet better lately, but no. Tumors. Lots of them. And all over. The funny thing about two years is that it’s both a long time, and not a long time. It’s like driving through the desert toward a far-off mountain. You keep driving for hours, but the mountain doesn’t seem to be getting closer until finally it does. Because the desert offers you little perspective, the mountain looks big from a distance, and then suddenly it looms over you when you finally do approach. Here we are two months past expiration, and the doctors sent him home from the hospital. “There’s nothing more we can do,” they said. “Liver failure is imminent.” The mountain now looms heavy above us. For the last two days he’s been lying in a hospital bed rented for his bedroom at home. His skin and eyes are yellow from jaundice, but in the afternoon sunlight he looks golden. I know this color is unnatural for a human, but I start to look at Chris differently now. Like a glowing spirit is ready to break out of the confines of his too-frail body. An oxygen machine offers a low hum, a steady rhythm to the room that’s broken up by his occasional awkward breaths. His lips and mouth are dry, making speaking difficult. But still we talk. For three hours we talk. For the last two years Chris has been reduced to numbers. “These markers are up, so we’re adding this medication,” he would tell us. “This cell count is down, we’re cutting back on chemo,” he might say. Because death is so uncomfortable for everyone, we focus on the numbers, the data. We look only at the disease, because the person reminds us how fragile we are. How it could be us. We cheer for news that tumors aren’t growing, we allow heavy sighs of sorrow to come out when we learn that the chemo keeping him alive is also destroying his body. With organs failing, he was admitted to the hospital again last week. He already has multiple tubes surgically implanted in his abdomen to drain fluids his liver and kidneys can no longer process, but even those tubes and surgeries aren’t keeping up anymore. I received a text from Chris last week. “Do you have time to talk this morning? I don’t know anyone else I can talk to about this,” it read. That morning we talked on the phone for a while about some out-of-body experiences Chris has had almost every night since last week. The first one scared him—only because he was so high up he felt he would fall. (Plus, he confides, he’s always had a fear of heights.) But the second experience, that was incredible. He couldn’t control his movement, but he was aware of being out of his body. He said it felt both electric and free. It was this week that Chris made peace with what’s happening to him. Death is the first promise the universe makes to a newborn babe. “No matter what, death is coming for you, little one.” For most of us, a visit from death happens in an instant. You’re here. You’re gone. A car accident, a heart attack, going to bed one night and not waking up, there are many ways death surprises us. But Chris… Chris got intimate with death. For Chris, this has been a long courtship, a slow dance with the inevitable. Chris and death cohabitated. They got to know each other. In a way, it’s a precious gift. For three hours today we talked about life, about death, and about this profound human experience he’s going through. Chris is no longer numbers or test results, he’s definitely no longer a disease. He’s a person again. A golden person ready to disembark on a new adventure. Now that he’s home, he’s still leaving his body. He tells me he’s seen his grandmother. He’s seen his old cat. He makes of point of saying he makes no attempt to control these adventures, he views them as a gift, and he’s intent on allowing whatever is supposed to come through to enter. As a stream of visitors pours through his doors in these, his final days, Chris has a gift for each of them. He is blessed in a sense that he is attending his own wake fully conscious. His friends and family get to tell him kind words. He graciously accepts them. There’s no need for any grudges anymore. Any issues or grievances make no sense in this moment. There’s no need for anything but kindness and love. I sit there in awe of the conversation. I too am dying. I have been since the day I was born. Though I’m in good health right now, I can’t know if there’s some runaway truck out there waiting for me on the highway of life. Or if one of my own routine doctor visits will turn into a death sentence. Today I received an abundance of gifts and blessings from Chris. Not just talking and connecting to a fellow human being, he reminded me that though I’m not counting my final hours, I’m still dying. Like him there’s no need for me to shut people out who may want to visit in whatever capacity. I learned this from a golden man whose spirit is already practicing to leave his body for his next journey. Two men sitting, talking, and dying together.   His family has started a GoFundMe page to help raise money to offset the finanicial hardship they’ve gone through over the past two years: https://www.gofundme.com/3kfnv4mc In loving memory of Christopher Quirk. February 28, 1969 – December 20, 2015