MIPA Workshop Blogs

            He’s strapped to a wheelchair, IV pumping morphine into his leg, bald from the treatments and oh so thin. This is my neighbor’s father, a parking meter waiting to expire. Lung Cancer has consumed him.

            He picks up another cigarette and puts it between his lips and I almost wanted to jump out up and yell, “You idiot! That is what put you in that wheelchair!” But I don’t. I watch the paralyzed, lifeless man suck in the highlight of his day.

            This sad situation makes me think about my life and my death. Currently my hourglass is running out of sand. Second by second. Someday I will be out of sand.

            I later asked Ryan if his dad (Greg) was a religious man. He replied, “No, not really.” I was just curious. No point intended, but later as I thought about it, it bothered me. That a man with so little time, and that’s all the time he has left, for eternity.

            Later that evening I was out on the lake fishing. I love to fish; it gives me a sort of happiness, much like when Greg inhales his nicotine fix. We had more in common than I thought, that’s how him and I escape that world which we live in and find happiness. This beautiful world we live and why do I have to escape it? It hit me then. Like a car smashing into a brick wall.

            That evening changed me. I didn’t have to read The Bible, go to church to learn what I learned then. I’ve always been a Christian. A believer. But I didn’t have passion for the subject. In a moment of thinking of darkness and death was the best moment of my life. I was at my own peace. In a moments notice I wasn’t afraid. I used to dread the day when I would fall asleep and not wake up, but now I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is more than just life out there.

            Watching a man’s time run out has made my time last forever.