Gift of Time
We were watching our daughter cheer at a high school basketball game when we received the call from our family in Louisiana. Truth be told, we knew this was inevitable, but you’re never ready to hear it. Brandon’s uncle, who really was like another father-figure to him and so much like a grandfather to our kids, was nearing the end of his health battle. It had been a year since we were made aware of his diagnosis, and we knew time was not on our side. So when we got the call he had been admitted to a hospice facility, we left the game, went home and packed, and drove through the night to be by his side.
We were with him and the rest of our family at the hospice facility for the next 12 days; most nights Brandon staying there to sleep upright in a chair or on a sofa in the family room. The first part of those days, we were able to still visit with our uncle as he spoke to us in difficult haggard breaths and through scribbles on a piece of paper. The latter part, we waited, prayed, and held each other closely.
Through all of this, we were learning that being with someone at the end of life is both painful and beautiful. We took turns telling stories through tear-filled eyes of special moments: him building homemade stilts for young Brandon; when he helped us lay new floors in our first house and watching him measure and remeasure and thinking we would never finish; stories of him playing Power Rangers or Batman with our oldest son when he was little; looking at pictures of him holding each of our newborn babies. We consoled one another and noticed through his many visitors all of the different people whose lives he touched during his lifetime without him trying and probably without him even noticing.
We are so grateful we could be there through his final days and beyond. We were there throughout the hospice stay, we were there afterwards to help our aunt make arrangements, there for the funeral, and there to support our aunt in the days following.
We were gone from home for a total of 22 days which is something we are not taking for granted. We know that, in our old lives, this would have never been feasible.
When we put a stake in the ground to redesign our lives and said we would always put family first, I don’t know that we could have envisioned all that would entail. We could not have imagined packing up our work and our kids for three weeks and to be able to still carry on with our work and their school. We knew we wanted the freedom to be where we felt we needed to be when we needed to be there, and we simply acted on faith we could make that a reality.
As we reflect on the past few weeks, one thing that made our relationships with our uncle so special is that he gave us his time. Time for projects, time to play, time for afternoon coffee together around the kitchen table. We are beyond thankful we could spend our time with him in his final days. We can think of no greater gift.
