A Father's Lament

Written by my father, Floyd Starnes, and originally posted on Sam's Caring Bridge site on June 30, 2008:

Samuel Dean Starnes, Sam, Sammy, Sam-Mule, Sammy-Bear died at 8 am on June 28, 2008. He was only 23 years old and would have graduated from the University of Texas at Tyler in May had he not become ill. He would have graduated with honors.

I cannot stop crying and I am in pain. All of me aches for my son to come back. I am like a reverse Shane: instead of a boy running after a man calling out, I am a man running after a boy yelling “Come back Sammy! Please don’t leave me.”

Sam’s Journey:

Heaven and Hell! Two sides of the same coin.

Hell is having the surgeon at Scott and White Hospital announce that your son, Sam, has terminal heart and lung cancer and Sam will probably be dead within two weeks.

Heaven is having the surgeon at Scott and White Hospital announce that there is a group called Hospice that will arrange an ambulance so Sam can die at home and not in a hospital.

Hell is three and a half months of pain, nausea, drugs, blood, catheters, enemas, weight loss, bed sores, weakness and other problems related to cancer.

Heaven is three and a half months to spend with your son instead of just two weeks.

Hell is holding your son’s head as he vomits up blood and bile, bright red and bright green like Satan’s favorite Christmas ornament. (This is a horrific vision I will see till the day I die).

Heaven is holding your son.

Hell is seeing the fear in your son’s eyes and hearing him say “Dad, I don’t want to die.” And all you can do is hold him close, tell him you love him, and that you don’t want him to die either and that miracles can happen.

Heaven was being able to hold him close and tell him that I love him even though the miracle did not happen.

Hell is when your son is in pain and so drugged on morphine and fentanyl that he cannot string a coherent sentence together.

Heaven is when your son is relatively pain free and wants to reminisce in the wee hours of the morning about the good times he has had with his family.

Hell is when your son has a seizure and grits his teeth in pain as he shakes uncontrollably and loses bladder control.

Heaven is the pride you feel when you son demands his dignity and asks to be carried to the bathroom as he rebels at the bedpan.

Hell is when your son loses almost all his physical strength.

Heaven is when your son never loses his mental strength or his wry sense of humor. When he accidentally got some urine on his hand, he demanded a washcloth immediately to clean himself. His mother got one and cleaned his hands and the rest of him to boot. When they were talking a few minutes later, she reached down, held his hand, then pressed his hand to her lips. His only comment: “Aren’t you glad we washed that hand.”

Hell is when your strapping young son drops from 190 pounds to 115 pounds (his actual weight at the end was lower, but the hospice nurse, Miss Mary, quit weighing him after he could not stand upright by himself). He became a translucent, pale, and very frail skeleton of his former self.

Heaven was the per severity with which your son tried to eat even though he did not feel like eating and knew that most of the time he would vomit back what he had just eaten.

Hell is when your son is in the hospital recovering from open heart surgery and not expected to live and you spend a week at his bed side and cannot stop yourself from stroking his hair which he interprets as patting him on top of his head.

Heaven is when three and a half months later, your son rolls on his side, unable to talk due to weakness in his lungs and the constant oxygen he is on, at 3 am in the morning (just 5 hours before he will die) , looks his old Dad in the eyes and pats him on top of the head.

Hell is holding your son in your arms as he dies.

Heaven is being able to hold your son in your arms and tell him how much you love him as he dies.

Although my pain is great….my gratitude for your caring concern for my son and my family is even greater…Thank you…Thank you all.

Floyd Starnes