A long time ago in what seemed like a faraway place, a friend of mine watched as his father died of cancer. It was a death years in the making with each just a little worse than the previous. When the end finally came, it came with a vengeance and suffering that refused to be alleviated. And when it was all said and done with the last amen spoken and the crowd dispersed, he looked at me and asked, “Why does it have to be this way?”

At that moment his question could have prompted at least a dozen different answers, mainly because I didn’t really understand what he was asking. But later conversations revealed the frustration that many families experience when there is immense suffering preceding death. Why does someone work hard all of their lives, struggle to support their families and make ends meet, try to always do what they should do, only to be “rewarded” with pain and suffering and a departure that is anything but easy?

His concept of how it should be mirrored F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, something I’m fairly certain he’d never read and which Brad Pitt had not yet brought to life. Why couldn’t birth take place at a ripe old age, emerging from the earth rather than the womb, with all the infirmities and frailties that come with age? But as the years pass, our bodies could grow stronger and the wisdom gained with age would be ours in the beginning. Eventually, the knowledge of our years would gradually wane, not in the dementia of old age but in the innocence of youth. Our last years on this earth would be spent in the carefree joy of childhood until at last, we simply faded away.

If I allow the creative side of my brain to experience this reversal of the aging process, I can see where life might not be so filled with dread as the years progress. One would not have to worry about how they would survive or who would care for them or what would happen to them when they could no longer manage on their own. But if the logical side of my brain ever gets hold of the scenario, all havoc breaks lose.

As nice as all of the foregoing might be, someone much smarter than I am and certainly wiser deemed that it would be as it is. I will never understand why Death has to come as it does, bringing with it the pain and suffering not only of the dying but of those who survive. But come it will and in its own good time; our best revenge is to make the most of life before it arrives.

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