Peace

It was sometime in 2005. Jean and I visited our friends Scott and Katy in Olympia not too long after they moved into their house. We stayed for the evening. For some reason, that time their son Matthew decided to hang out with me. He had always been quiet and shy around us, so it was especially nice to be the "chosen one" for a few hours. We ate dinner, played a few games, along with his younger sisters, Anna and Emma, and he sat with me later in the evening while the adults talked. All-in-all it was a nice evening made even better by my little companion.

Matthew died Tuesday night.

Evidently, he had had a fever that he just couldn't kick. Katy decided to sit up with him Tuesday night. His breathing started to get very shallow. She called 911 and started CPR, which the paramedics continued. He never came back.

Matthew had a severe case of Huntington's Disease, which had progressed faster than we could comprehend. He was diagnosed less than two years ago. By the end, he was fed through a tube and needed a wheelchair to get around. How Scott and Katy were able to deal so well with what was happening to their son, I'll never know. It would be comforting to believe that children with special needs are only given to parents with the strength to deal with them, but it's not true. Not everyone has what it takes to care for perfectly healthy children, so when a child is devastated by illness, and his parents respond they way Scott and Katy did, I can't help but be amazed.

That same reserve of strength that helped them during Matthew's life is helping them cope with his death. They knew he didn't have a long life ahead of him, but they didn't expect it to be so short and to end so suddenly. But, as Katy told Jean the other day when she called to break the news, he's not in pain any more. It may seem like a thin reed, but it's enough for now. Matthew was too young, too innocent, and too gentle a little boy to have to endure so much.

And that's why, at least for now, I'm not going to dwell on the difficulty of the end of his life. Instead, I'm going to remember the sweet little boy who decided to be my friend for an evening.

Helping make cider: