On helping walk a brother home

Michael and Kelli Simon have started every day of the last few weeks with the same question:

Is this the day?

Michael and Kelli have had a lot of days together. They’ve been married for 31 years.

So many days together; so few remaining.

It’s unfair as hell, really.

Michael was diagnosed with stage-4 colorectal cancer. The cancer is everywhere. He is actively dying. At age 54. I know him because of Man Up to Cancer.

Is this the day?

As he lives and while he dies, Michael shares his experience on social media. He writes beautiful poetry and prose about the process of dying, what’s going through his mind, how the fact of his dying has brought family and friends to his side, and helped mend his relationship with an estranged son.

He shares music that brings meaning and resonates: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Graham Nash, Gong, The Polyphonic Spree; the poetry of Stephen Dobyns; and the events of his day, like he and Kelli dressing like each other and going out on the town for Halloween.

Michael and Kelli held a living wake, so his loved ones could share all the words and say all of the things and take care of all the business while Michael is alive. I’m told it was beautiful and also very difficult.

Hard Eucharisteo. Ann Voskamp’s phrase for leaning into the difficult to find the thing that is beautiful.

And every day Michael wakes up, there is the question:

Is this the day?

Colorado legalized Medical Aid in Dying in 2016. Coloradans can request and self-administer medical aid-in-dying medication in order to end their life.

They’re not just handing out death kits in Colorado, mind you. There are rules, there is paperwork and there is a bit of training in how the process works.

Once the patient has the medication in hand and then once the patient decides to self-administer, no healthcare professionals can be involved.

When and if the time comes, Michael’s hospice worker will leave the room.

If the time comes.

Is this the day?

Not yet.

The “not yet” has given Michael the opportunity to wrestle with and share his spiritual evolution. While he is seemingly at peace in the knowledge that he is dying, there are things that make him anxious. Not least of which is making sure his bride, the beautiful Kelli, is loved and cared for when he’s gone.

There’s also the God question. When Kelli’s asleep and he’s wake in the night, anxiety comes for him.

What about God?

He’s considered himself agnostic for a very long time but as he slides toward the end he wonders. Has he been wrong about God? Is it okay, in the end, to take the Medical Aid in Dying medications?

I had the pleasure — no, the joy — of talking with Michael about these weighty topics. Ours was a conversation that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

I am blessed to be a member of a very welcoming, come who you are, ELCA Lutheran Church here in Knoxville. Liturgical tradition. Focus on communion, community and God’s grace, which cannot be earned and is freely given to all who believe.

No prayer of salvation. Just grace.

We are born beloved children of God, we die beloved children of God. God’s grace covers everything in between.

I told Michael that God loves him and has demonstrated over and over again — through the love and support of the people surrounding him and Kelli, through the relationships that have been mended, through all of it — that God is with him.

Michael told me he has very conservative friends who disagree with his choice to even have the Medical Aid in Dying medication in his home.

“If I had to guess, they’ve told you things like, ‘everything happens for a reason’ and ‘God doesn’t give you more than you can handle,’ right?”

Yes, he said.

If I had a dollar.

Those phrases are spiritual and theological malpractice. Trite phrases that make the speaker feel better in the moment but at the end of the day can do real damage to one’s relationship with the Almighty.

Michael has terminal cancer. There’s no “reason” for that.

Shit happens. It’s how we deal with it that matters.

God doesn’t dump stuff on us to try to push us to the breaking point. That would make the God of grace quite maniacal: “Let’s see what he does with this on top of everything else!”

The sad reality is that life does in fact overwhelm some people. That’s why suicide happens. That’s why we have a mental health crisis.

I would love for “everything happens for a reason” and “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” to be stricken from the vocabulary.

Those phrases don’t bring the comfort well-meaning people think they do. In the end, they make God look like an asshole.

He’s not. Of that, I am certain.

What matters is that Michael is surrounded by love during his last days.

God is in all that is happening in his life, even as it is ending. Including my conversation with him.

And God will be with Michael and Kelli if and when the moment comes that they decide it is time to take the medication.

They won’t have to ask the question anymore. They’ll know. They’ll both know. Together.

“He’ll be right there with you, and he will welcome you with open arms on the other side,” I said.

For what it’s worth, Michael texted me later to tell me he relayed our conversation to Kelli. They cried together, both having found some measure of peace from the anxiety.

That’s God’s doing, not mine. I was just the messenger.

Somewhat randomly, I’d been thinking about medically assisted death for a while.

I’m a fan of the Thursday Murder Club book series by Richard Osman. One of the main characters suffers with dementia and his slow decline is detailed over the course of the four books. In the latest installment, he and his wife make the decision to end his life with medical assistance.

As I listened to the narrator tell this part of the story, I sat in my car and cried.

Before he slips away, Stephen says to Elizabeth: “Imagine if we hadn’t met. Just imagine what I would have missed.”

I didn’t know Michael before our call the other day except through social media and through mutual friends.

I may have walked only a few short steps with Michael on his journey home, but imagine if we hadn’t talked

Just imagine what I would have missed.

Thanks be to God.