Tough day yesterday.
I drove my daughter, Elisa, over to Seattle to see Keith. Keith is her significant other. A nice gut, a talented carpenter, hard worker. A guy that was footloose and an adventurer, he had spent the last nine summers mining gold in Alaska. He didn't get rich, but always made wages, with a little left over. Kinda like a couple of month vacation for free.
Last year I grubsteaked them for a grand, with the agreement that they would pay me back with an ounce of gold. Overall, they broke even, with a little eft over.
Keith had no problem finding work, as he has an excellent reputation as a talented carpenter and a hard worker. Everything was going according to plan.
Then he started having abdominal and back pain, and one day his eyeballs turned yellow.
The diagnosis was devastating. He had pancreatic cancer that was inoperable. The cancer was pinching odd the bile duct on his liver, so they installed a stent to allow the bile to drain, but there was nothing to deal with the underlying cause.
So since November we have had to watch him decline.
He steadily lost weight, and went from around 190 down and down and down.
When I saw him to say goodbye yesterday, his chart said that he weighed 123 pounds.
He looked like he had just been freed from a concentration camp.
He faded in and out. Sometimes he was there, sometimes not.
I got to say goodbye and get some sense of closure.
It is very difficult to believe in a God who tortures people to death slowly. No man could have devised a nastier way to kill someone.
So I told him I would see him on the other side, and shed a few trees.
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