A man diagnosed with terminal cancer finds comfort in his family after a career-focused life. He comes to terms with it. “I will likely die sooner than all my family.”

This became a calming mantra that smoothed the sharp presence of death after the biopsy came back positive for bowel cancer. The doctor, ham-fisted in his delivery of medical analysis, had said it like a statistician. “The median survival time is about 29 months.” He emphasized “median” as if it was important, but the man and his wife in the doctor’s exam room did not understand. All that mattered was that strange metric for his remaining life. “29 months.”

“You will likely die sooner than your wife and two kids. I know this is tough,” the doctor went on as if approximating human feeling, “but I advise getting your DNR in order.”

His wife interjected suddenly, “DNR?”

“Do Not Resuscitate. It is important since the most likely scenario is bowel dysfunction related to the cancer, the weakened body due to malnutrition, or the medicines in the course of treatment . . .”

After tears and awkward re-thinking of how they talked about the future, the couple sat down with the kids. “Your father is sick, as you know. We talked to the doctor and they have determined it is terminal.”

“What does that mean,” the 17 year old son said with slight panic under his steeled expression.

The father suddenly inserted himself. “It means I will die sooner than we thought. Sooner than you two,“ he smiled, “and sooner than mom.”

It dawned on him that he was not sentenced to death. He had always been living on slopes angled toward the grave. Nothing had fundamentally changed except the timing. A great comfort washed over him as he saw this frame on his cancer relieved his children a bit. His wife had started to tear up, but not as intensely as she had been the two days since the doctor’s visit. As he looked at her, the age lines that had creased her mouth from her laugh, the bit of gray in strands of her blonde hair here and there, a sense of comfort settled around his chest and lined his words.

“I will just be gone a bit sooner than planned. In the meantime, we still have each other.”

Even as he said this, he recognized how selfish it was of him. He could benefit from these three, his closest family. They would support him and be sad for his impending departure. He felt loved, but he also knew the comfort rooted in how he could take advantage of his family. He would be cared for over the next 29 months. He would leave them but they would not leave him.

Two weeks later was when everything changed and no meditation on how time is measured or Buddhist wisdom about accepting change would save him. The call came around 6:15pm. He was rushing out of the house to meet Ailyn and the kids at his favorite Italian restaurant. Chemo was starting the next week and he wanted to have a final beef lasagna before changing his diet forever. They were meeting him there after Ailyn picked up the kids.

He ignored the first call. It was an unknown number. When his phone rang again right away, he picked up. The voice on the other end was  unfamiliar.

“Mr. Pommer?”
“Yes, to whom am I speaking?”

“Mr. Pommer, this is the Richmond Police Department. There has been an accident and your family was involved . . .”

He listened as the officer flatly spoke of his wife and children. They had been side-swiped by a large truck on the highway in transit to his favorite Italian restaurant. The car was pushed off the interstate and the car fell from the elevated section of the interstate outside of Richmond. There were no survivors.

“It was the last time we were going there,” he said to someone specific he did not know as he sat on his wife’s favorite comforter on their bed. It was blue but looked darker as evening dimmed the room. A feeling of fatal irony flooded his chest like an inky darkness. He would die last. He would die alone.

A new horror shot through the layers of love that had contained the old horror, itself still gurgling anxiety like an evil lava. His vision narrowed. The voice was asking something of him, but he could not hear it. The voice receded and then went away. Then the wall he stared at faded a bit as night sneaked in earlier and earlier those November days. Then the bed he sat on went missing as sickening numbness bubbled up from his intestines and percolated up to fill the empty house.