The Last Days

Well, it’s been a while! Hyrum is still here. He has a few days left, we think. He had a solid week of eating only sherbet (and by eating, I mean letting it melt into his mouth and then painstakingly swallowing it). Yesterday was his last sherbet day. Today he can hardly make a sound. There was a day I just wanted to shout “Just go already!! This is too hard to watch!!” But I asked for a blessing and had a good, sincere prayer with God. I remembered that consecration is not about ME doing more or giving more, (because I could not do more of this)… it is about what God does with what I offer. He is the one that consecrates, not me. I have not done anything more with the days after that, but He has done more with them. He has filled me with more love. More calm. More gratitude. Insight to Hyrum’s jumbled words. Somehow, I am capable of doing the thing I've dreaded the most this whole year: watching Hyrum die. 

As I watch him, I've been deeply struck by his tenacity. Hyrum’s been so limited so long. His body doesn’t get full use- he can’t swim like he so loves to do or eat his favorite foods. No walking, talking, swallowing, no moving his right hand… At this point, all he can really do with his body is hurt, grunt softly, listen a little, sleep occasionally, give a small thumbs up, and just… be in it. Honestly. That’s really it. What joy is there in that??

But he CLINGS to it. He loves it. It is worth so much to him that he will take the hurt and restlessness to have it 10 days more. He literally just lays there! But he will not let it go. He actively chooses to BE for every small moment that his body lets him stay.

I’m reminded of that time I first encountered Hyrum’s soul. I’d just learned that I was pregnant, and was doubting it was real. I stood there, washing dishes, and I felt him next to me- this bright and eager spirit who would be my firstborn son. I felt him yearn to be here, so excited to begin. He ached to have his body, have this life, this earthly time.

Cuz even if it can’t do much, a body does a lot. It offers me relationships- the family that birthed me and the people in my space. Proximity is bonding, and a body gives me that. It ages and instructs the soul. It feels. It hears. It sees. It has the power to touch and change and shape and build and be. It offers me a NOW that’s real beyond what I believe. The mind exists untethered by a time or state or place. It drifts between sad and happy, there and here, then and now. It self-creates and self-destructs and builds the world it seeks. 

Our bodies? They are in the now. One place. One time. One world- the one we share, with all its truths, complex, beyond control. The gift of now… It offers me sensation, social bonds. It offers an oasis in which wandering minds can dwell. It offers a reality that’s bigger than my own, and if I choose to learn from it, it shapes my very soul.

How could I treat that casually?! My anchor to the world? My window to experience? My root in human love? When I think of my body, I should appreciate its follies and engage with all its gifts. It merits careful care, active respect, and intentional experience. Truthfully, I ought to be thanking God every day that I even have one at all.

So as excruciating as it is to watch my son struggle and stiffen and fade, I guess I see his wisdom. A few more days of living is a gift worth dying for. The least that I can do is let him live it, help him be. I’ll sit with him. I’ll watch him hurt. I’ll learn what he can teach.