With the shift changing, the nurse was identifying us to her relief: "She is the social worker…the mother…the doctor from the Jimmy Fund…” Turning towards me, she said, “I'm sorry, I don't know who you are. Are you the father?"

"No, I'm just a friend."

“Just a friend”—what pitiful words. The girl lay dying in the intensive care unit of Children’s Hospital, surrounded by an awesome display of life-saving equipment. The machines maintained breathing. They fought to extend life. But on one side, a screen showed a waving line indicating blood pressure, beeping out the pulse rate with a flickering red light. Inexorably, defying tears, prayers, cries, and mechanics, the waving line became flatter, the beeping and flashing slower. The beeping stopped. The line went flat. In a moment, she had died.

In my life I have cut and blasted my way through mountains of rock, dug huge channels in the earth, put towers of steel up against the sky, and directed armies of men and equipment to tear down or to build up. I have smashed my body though the ocean's surf, stood on a high peak to survey the world, accepted the crash of magnum firearms, loved and been loved, healed and been healed. Yet, at the final moment, there is nothing. "Just a friend" stands and watches in utter helplessness and hopelessness as she expires.

A scream comes up from the bottom of my soul: “I AM STRONG! I CAN STOP THIS!” But I can't. My strength has no meaning. A life has ceased to be. It is finished.

"It is finished”—words from the Cross. He had no strength. He gave his strength away to others, dying the poorest and weakest of deaths. And He was there, almost tangibly, in the room this day—another friend—bringing comfort.

There are two places for friends: one for holding my hand so I do not die alone, the other for holding my hand to lead me into PEACE. It was inevitable that Christ died the death of the weak. How could a strong person know how to lead me through that great weakness into eternal love?

     When my beeping stops, I want two "friends."
     One, a human to hold my hand, easing my loneliness.
     The other, more than human, to lead me to the light.
     Isn't God strange—
     He gave us both.

"Just a friend.” It is enough.