Looking through a window

A few days ago, I walked back to my hospice unit late in the day, and found one of my patients sitting on a bench, dressed to leave, waiting for her ride. It was hard to imagine, as 17 days before she had been sent to us expecting to die, with widely metastatic cancer, and a bowel obstruction. "There's nothing that can be done," she had been told. And we worked with pain medication to assure comfort, and waited with her, and prayed with her.

Somehow, the bowel obstruction had relieved (at least for now). And she was sitting and waiting to go home.

I walked up to her and we took each other's hands and I told her that I prayed that she would be well and that I would see her again. I knew the cancer was not cured, and I knew this was a gift of very special time. And what I meant was really - I hope that you do not die soon, that this does not recur too soon, and she gave me this huge smile and said, "I do hope I see you again but not here, maybe walking down the street and we will pass each other by and wave hello, or, perhaps, I will be looking through a window from a store, and I will see you walking by, and I will wave!"

And I knew yet again that sometimes, things occur that we cannot understand - that while often curing is beyond our skill, caring is not.

Sometimes it is simply, as Art Buchwald wrote, "too soon to say goodbye."