We were watching The McLaughlin Group yesterday morning -- it's taped on Friday, but airs on Sunday. So they were discussing the death of the Pope, which hadn't happened yet as they spoke, but which was clearly imminent. In retrospect, Eleanor Clift might have seemed a bit less shrill and feisty than usual, or maybe it was just that for once the men made way and let her speak without her having to shout them down. At the end of the show, John McLaughlin made the stunning announcement that Eleanor's husband, Tom Brazaitis, had just died on Wednesday, and that her "the show must go on" appearance was Tom's wish.
Brazaitis, a progressive columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who shared his medical odyssey with his readers "without self-pity -- and with occasional humor," died at 64 of kidney cancer that had spread to his bones, lungs, and brain. Ugh! That makes the Pope's ordeal look merciful. Yet according to his wife's clear-eyed tribute, Tom -- and, plainly, she with him -- met it gallantly. We're all going there, as the one accompanying and as the one departing. One more instructive memento mori in an Easter season full of them:
He set such a grand example in how to face death and dying that I could do no less. I had to muster the courage to end the journey with him. Once we enrolled in a hospice, the goal was no longer prolonging Tom’s life but helping him to die without pain and with the dignity that he deserved. If you think of life and death on a continuum, finding the point where it tips is complicated. It cuts across all political lines and gets to the root of our humanity. It requires faith informed by years of intimacy that you’re doing what’s right for your loved one. I told Tom that I was really getting into being his caregiver. “Watch out,” he said with a twinkle. “I hear they’re recruiting from the ranks.”
(Hat tip: Dean's World <-- Michelle Malkin, who drops the partisan mask to deliver a generous human tribute to the couple, with links to tributes and reminiscences.)
- amba
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