Sometime in 1983, I began praying to recapture a sense of closeness with God that I experienced earlier in my life. One night I was startled out of my sleep, didn’t see or hear anything, yet the words, “The Way to Get Closer to Me, is the Way of the Cross” were indelibly planted in my brain. When I awoke in the morning, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was to do, so I began the practice of saying the Stations of the Cross.  
      One year later the meaning of those words hit home when my 18 year-old son, Jimmy, was diagnosed with bone cancer. Jimmy believed he was chosen to suffer, in order to bring others closer to God. He embraced that mission.
      Jimmy’s initial chemotherapy protocol failed and his arm, shoulder and collar bone had to be amputated. Then after several other chemo protocols also failed, he underwent major surgeries on both lungs, followed by more chemo that caused his left lung to collapse. The cancer spread throughout his skeletal system, then to his brain causing a stroke and lapses in and out of comas and finally death.
       In a consultation with his oncologist’s team just before being admitted to MSKCC for the last time, Jimmy and I wanted some straight talk, so I said, “Look, my job is different than yours. I have to help keep up Jimmy’s hope as long as there is hope and I have to help him die, if he is going to die. Jimmy can handle death.” Jimmy immediately piped up saying, “I have a better place to go!”
       Dr. Caparros responded, “You will be on pain control until you die.” Even the professionals could not stop the tears welling up in their eyes.

       As Jimmy was nearing death he was being cared for by a wonderful young nurse. She said to me that he must be special because nurses are coming down from other floors in the hospital to visit him. I responded, “it was too bad you got him so late and didn’t have the chance to experience his humor.” She said, “Oh but I did. The other day he was having a difficult pain episode and I administered a booster shot of morphine through the catheter in his chest. He was on a morphine drip at the time. Then I began to gently stroke his left arm saying, “Jimmy you are feeling very tired. You are lying on a beach, feeling very calm and relaxed. Jimmy opened his eyes and asked, “Is there a girl lying next to me? She said, “Yes.” He said, “Well then, I can’t be relaxed.”
      Readers can grasp a quick sense of his paschal journey by reading the quotes that make up the book’s chapter headings. Each chapter ends with a reflection; opportunities for action, and a Prayer of thanksgiving in gratitude for some blessing contained in the chapter. I have written this book in an attempt to foster Jimmy’s mission of bringing others to God.
      Gabrielle Bossis, in her book HE AND i, received a message from Jesus saying, “What sadness, my child, if you were to arrive alone! Provide yourselves, all of you, with a cortege of companion souls saved because of your solicitude . . . If only your souls could each become one of a constellation led by you into the home of the Father of the family, what acclamations there would be!”
       In the last entry in her book marked May 25th, Gabrielle poses this question to Jesus: “Have I come to the end of my life? Is this the moment when I celebrate my first and last Mass? Where are You, loving presence? . . . and afterward, what will it be? Jesus responds, It will be I. It will be I. Forevermore!” Jimmy died May 25, 1985.

       Come walk this paschal journey with Jimmy. It will prepare you for your own, or that of a loved one, when the time comes.