Reply #7: here's the link [View All]

[MBS]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/opinion/24herbert.html

Here's an excerpt from the beginning

My father was stricken with throat cancer back in the early 1990s. . .

I was in the doctor’s office . . . and my dad, Chester Herbert, was sitting in a small waiting room out of earshot but very close by. The doctor had placed X-ray photos on the wall and was pointing to the original spot of the cancer and the regions to which it had spread.

Inoperable, he said. Incurable.

“How much time does he have?” I asked.

The doctor knew my family well, and he had the saddest look on his face. “Maybe a few months, Bob.”

After looking at my face, he added: “You never know about these things. It could be longer.”

and excerpts from the end

Much of the press coverage of Senator Kennedy’s illness has had the unmistakable quality of an obituary. . . .

Which brings me back to my dad. . . . He wasn’t ready to die when the doctors and the charts and the X-rays said he was supposed to.

He . . . . lived a dozen years after that awful day in the doctor’s office.

The press will tell you that this is Senator Kennedy’s toughest fight. I don’t even know if that’s true. Who knows what the toughest fight has been for someone named Kennedy? This is a guy who has experienced every kind of horror, who went down in a plane, who had to fight back after Chappaquiddick, who has had two kids stricken with cancer, and on and on. So who knows?

All I know is that the show’s not over until the curtain comes down, the lights go out and everybody has left the theater.

We’re not there yet. Hang in there, Ted.