The end of the battle
and now he will be 51 always....
When my kids were little, part of the bedtime routine after the bath and the reading, was a lullaby. Both of them had their own - my daughter’s was “Puff the Magic Dragon”, and my son’s was “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" - each was altered slightly to include their names and to otherwise personalize them
So much happened after that last post. The cancer moved to his brain and he had two bouts of targeted radiation to kill tumors.
On Wednesday, June 11th, Tommy went to the ER after collapsing at home because his legs buckled and was admitted with extreme swelling in his legs and feet. The hospital did a full body scan, and found that while they were playing whack-a-mole with the brain tumors, the cancer had quietly colonized his entire lungs, which were slowly filling with fluid, and attacked his liver. On Friday the 13th, we were all told that there was no more treatment, that he couldn’t go home [neither to his friends in Nashville nor his family in Baltimore] and that he had 90 days or so left. On Monday the 16th, he was transferred to the Alive Hospice. Gem left for Baltimore the next day, and I stayed in the room with him until Thursday the 19th.
We had many hard conversations about that doorway we all must go through, about giving permission for him to go when he was ready without worrying who was or wasn’t there at the time. He had been saying for a couple of months that he felt something was coming, that it was like walking beside train tracks that were starting to vibrate. We talked about love, about time, about his vision of the afterlife - he was going to wake up sitting on the boardwalk with the gulls wheeling about and the fresh salt breeze bringing all the smells of funnel cake and caramel corn, and then he was going to start renovating his favorite Arcade while waiting for the rest of us.
When I returned home to make arrangements to return on the 30th and stay through his birthday, I knew I might not be there at the end, that I may never see my boy again. None of us were sure that he would make it to his birthday on July 14th, but we had promised him that we wouldn’t hang on to him when it was time…..
Bryan and Chris were with him, as they had been every step of this 3 1/2 year fight against cancer, Bryan camping in the room. On Wednesday the 25th, Tommy suffered another seizure, then slipped into a light coma. Before I went to bed that night, I called Bryan and he put the phone next to Tommy’s head, and I sang my boy his lullaby, told him I loved him, and if the train came, he should go through the door. Bryan said he heard me, as a tear ran down his cheek, and his body relaxed. He went into a deep coma at that point and never responded again.
On Saturday July 14th, Tommy took his first breath, and at 2:38 AM on Thursday June 26th, he took his last.
We have decided to request donations to the American Cancer Society for research in how to prevent and treat colorectal cancer. Donations may be made in Tommy's memory at https://tinyurl.com/memorialforTCR