No encore

In this season of joy, anticipation, hope, healing and birth, our friend is dying. Will die, today.

Because he has deteriorated in two short weeks from being a vibrant, handsome, talented man of fifty to a wasted patient in intensive care, connected to tubes and drains and monitors. Because the doctors have concurred that he will never make it.

If a miracle occurred and he did somehow find a way to support his own life, he would be blind and deaf. He is a professional musician with a voice like a god. He might cope with the blindness, but to silence his music would be to lock him in a living hell. In this performance, he gets no encore, though we are applauding as loudly as we can through our tears.

But, he cannot live without the machines right now. And they will be stilled as soon as the family gathers later today.

For the songs, the smiles, the encouragement, the decades of friendship, thank you, Dan.

You have been more than a friend. You have been music to our ears.

God bless, Danny Boy.