Ben Towne

I never met Ben nor have I met his parents. Ben's mom, Carin, is dear friends with our daughter Annie. They have shared a deep love for country music. They were part of the same church, and Ben's dad, Jeff, was on that church's staff with Annie.

Just as Annie moved to Nashville, Ben was diagnosed with disease which in a breathtakingly high percentage of cases is a death sentence. Neuroblastoma, as I understand it, is a cancer that attacks the nervous system viciously, aggressively, quickly, and causing horrific suffering. The only treatment that holds much hope is as gruesome and horrible as the disease, attacking good nerves at the same time as the cancer.

Over the last 16 months this little two year old boy went through more suffering than most human beings will go through in a long life. Treatment was a nightmare of pain, one awful step at a time. Ben often lay writhing in pain, enduring the one pathway of hope that he had available to him. He lived in the hospital most of that time. He had much of his childhood stolen from him by this disease, having to become as tough and strong-willed as life gradually makes most of us over six or more decades.

Still, the stories we have heard about little Ben have been remarkable. The humor, energy, determination, courage, affection for those he loved, love of life. . . Ben was amazing. Astounding. Awesome. Awe-inspiring. Heroic. Hilarious. Heartwarming.

On November 3rd, we got word that the full extent of treatment known to modern medicine had failed, and that Ben was being sent home to die. Just when the hope had been that his body would be cancer free, tumors began popping up in his body, growing, again, viciously and aggressively, demonically, to my limited perception. Yet he fought on, giving his family many more memories.

Ben died yesterday morning, December 30th, 2008. He was almost three and a half years old.

For me, the intense suffering of a small child is a crossroad event, especially when it leads to death. One road coming through the intersection is actually a superhighway. It is characterized by an agony that articulates the very real, very honest and very tempting cry, "Where were You?"

The other "road," actually little more than a climber's trail, dangerous and meandering, staying close to the contours of the way things truly are, is definitely the way less traveled. This path is characterized by an agony that articulates a different cry. Something David Hart wrote in the Wall Street Journal a few days before Ben was born, in response to the tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands:

"For while Christ takes the suffering of His creatures up into His own, it is not because He or they had need of suffering, but because He would not abandon His creatures to the grave. . . As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy."

Goodbye, Ben. I never met you, but I will never forget you.