As I prepare to leave for my year of writing, I hear many stories from people who inquire about renting my home. One was a woman whose husband died suddenly, soon after they sold the home where they raised their family and moved to a faraway state with more sunshine. It makes me think about the gift of having enough time to know when it’s running out.
So, this week, I’m doing something different and sharing a story I told at Healing Waters, a benefit for Hospice of the Fisher Home. The video was recorded by Montague Community Television. It’s a story about healing and hope, and what might come next.
Watch the video above or, if you prefer, read the story for yourself below.
Cancer Calls
When Alex discovered that he was in stage four with an aggressive form of stomach cancer. He had a better idea than many of us might about what that meant.
Alex was 48 and he worked at Delaware Hospice. He had been a friend and companion to many families on their journeys with terminal illness, as a palliative care chaplain and bereavement counselor.
He also had his personal experience with cancer. When Alex was 17, he developed Hodgkin's lymphoma. The treatment in those days was heavy doses of radiation and during those many sessions, he befriended another boy, his own age and also suffering from Hodgkin's.
Alex was fortunate, he recovered. Sadly, his friend did not. Alex wondered even, then as a teenager, if this was a sign that there was some special purpose for his life, something that he had yet to fulfill.
Living Service
Alex was the youngest and unexpected child in a family of boys. His mother called him a gift baby. His brothers called him spoiled and ‘the favorite’. Alex grew up to be a young man who embraced life to the fullest. He loved to be out in nature, hiking and kayaking. He loved to travel and made friends wherever he went. His appetite was legendary—no slice of cake was safe if Alex was in the vicinity.
Eventually, he felt the call to serve and he was on the path to becoming a Jesuit when he met Cheri who would become his wife and ‘main squeeze’. After he became a counselor, hospice was the perfect place for Alex with his natural warmth, empathy, and compassion.
The relationships that Alex made in hospice extended far beyond the bedside. He included those who had died in his community, he liked to talk about them as his friends in the balcony, as if they were all at the theater with him on stage. He could picture them there, looking down and cheering him on, helping him in his work.
He felt them there the day he discovered that his condition had become terminal. Alex had gone into Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York thinking that he was in Stage II. However, when the surgeon opened him up, she discovered that the cancer had spread much further than expected so, as they had agreed previously, she closed him up again without causing further injury.
Summer in the City
A family friend had loaned Alex and Cheri an apartment in the city so that they could have some time to rest and recuperate. My husband and I were driving through around that time so we arranged to meet them for dinner.
We met at a French restaurant on a beautiful summer evening. The food was incredible. Alex ordered the salmon hollandaise and it came with a lovely salad of gorgeous vegetables fresh from the farmer's market. It was the first time I ever saw Alex unable to finish his plate.
We ordered a tartelette aux framboise for the table for dessert and the server brought one of everything on the menu because, ‘why not?’ We asked for coffee and it came with handmade bon-bons. Then we asked for the check and it came with cognac and we laughed because it seemed as if we would never be able to leave and wasn't that a good omen! The name of the restaurant was Tout Va Bien, all will be well.
Winter Sets In
That Christmas Eve, Alex and Cheri arrived at our home with the beginnings of a snowstorm. It snowed all night, a thick white blanket coming down around us and closing us off from the rest of the world. It was the perfect White Christmas.
In February. Alex died peacefully at home with his wife and his hospice nurse beside him. A few days later, the hospice team came to visit and Cheri could see them outside in the driveway, looking up at the roof of her house. She went out to see what they were looking at and there, above her home, was this—
In scientific terms, this is a circumzenithal arc; it happens when sunlight is refracted through ice crystals high in the atmosphere. I prefer to call it a rainbow smile.
A Smile from the Balcony
I saw a rainbow small for myself a couple of years later. It was just after New Year’s and we'd had a lovely snowfall, just like Alex's last Christmas. My kids were out in the driveway making snow angels and came running in to tell me about the special rainbow in the sky. So I went outside and said ‘Hello’ to Uncle Alex.
A few days after that a new friend came to visit. She noticed the picture on my kitchen wall so I told her the story of the rainbow smile. Just as I finished, the administrator from the school where I worked called. There had been a terrible accident and one of our former students had been killed. It was devastating news. She was a bright, vibrant, young, high schooler. Her family was closely involved with the school and they asked us to hold a Memorial.
My task was to draft a communication for our community. I wondered where on earth to begin—how could I share such terrible news? How might I include some tiny seed that might bring comfort?
I took the picture of the rainbow smile and I put it on my desk. It's my reminder that I have Alex in the balcony, looking down and cheering me on—helping me in my work. It's my reminder that ‘tout va bien’; all will be well.
Thanks for reading—go hug someone you love and tell them how much they mean to you!
Warmly, Beth
Whole Stories Shortly is a reader-supported publication and, as I prepare to spend a year writing and traveling overseas, I hope you’ll subscribe to join the adventure.
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Hope and Healing in a Smile from Heaven