This is a beautiful story, which will probably bring tears to your eyes. Thank you to Peter Daly, Jim Noonan and NCR for sharing it with us. CCC
By Fr. Peter Daly
I haven't written anything for a long time because I have been busy as a caregiver. The last 18 months have been the "story of José Luis." It has been one of the most important chapters of my life.
In October of 2020, my friend José Luis Sánchez was having severe stomach troubles. He thought it might be colitis.
Toward the end of November 2020, I drove him home from his final colonoscopy. He looked positively ashen. As we drove to his apartment he told me, "It's cancer." Specifically, it was metastatic colon cancer that had spread from his colon to his liver and to one lung. The doctor had told him that the cancer was inoperable. The best he could hope for was to delay its progress with aggressive chemotherapy.
I was devastated. "I'm so sorry José," was about all I could say. José Luis was a retired librarian, a man of deep intellect but few words. He said stoically, "C'est la vie." But I could see tears running down his cheeks. We rode the rest of the way home in silence, holding hands.
José had lived on the third floor of a walk-up building in Washington, D.C., for 28 years. In the four years that I had known him, I had often seen him take the stairs two at a time, all the way to the third floor. But this time, he moved very slowly up the stairs. He collapsed on the second-floor landing, completely out of breath.
I sat down on the floor with him and put my arms around him. I said, "José you cannot live alone anymore. You have to come home with me." A couple of weeks later, on Dec. 8, I moved him to the guest room in my house with just some clothing, a few personal items, and a huge stack of books. José never went anywhere without a book. He was constantly reading in English and Spanish.
Fr Peter Daly is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Washington. He served at various parish assignments for more than 30 years and continues to help in parishes. He is also a lawyer and who has worked with Catholic Charities on immigration. For more than 25 years he wrote a bi-weekly a column for Catholic News Service. He writes about living the faith while trying to be open to the world around us.