Finding Words for Leroy

Behind sterile walls and closed doors, under white lights and on hard chairs, Leroy waits. He wrestles with hospital gowns and bed controls and television that gets lousier as you need it more.

The world turning outside his window fades into an abstraction: clouds roll by, the sun rises and sets, people walk along the sidewalks, but time in the hospital spins freely from that outside world.

Leroy has stared at himself in the mirror and reflected on his life, contemplated his mortality, thought of friends and family, struggled with the anguish and pain that cancer brought. And he has written about it and talked about it on the radio.

They told him he didn't have long, that his days were numbered and that the cancer would catch him soon. But the days stretched out, and despair became hope and then celebration as the doctors seemed to regain control.

And then the bad days come back and shades of despair as the doctors search for answers. Mortality scowls again from the mirror.

Leroy, what can you say to you? What can I share? To express regret isn't right nor to offer false hope. Yet it seems heartless to remain silent when you have shared so much throughout it all.

I don't know the you. You don't know me. Our paths will never cross. Yet they already have in a way. And I know my heart is with you, even if I can find no words.

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