“Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.
- Isaiah 38:5
The New Boilerplate
My wife filled a small book with “Angel” on the cover. It was hidden with a box of crafting things. On 18 July 2025, I thought I had posted the last of these. But this little angel book held a prayer, followed by 71 quotes. So, the “with a little help” series is back in business for a while. And it will be fun for me. She did not attribute any of the quotes. The first quote was from James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the USA. The next one was disputed, with some thinking it originated with Teddy Roosevelt and others saying Fred Astaire. After the prayer, these might be on the lighter side.
Her quote
“No one is so old as to think he doesn’t live one more year.”
- Cicero, with my wife’s slight rewrite
“No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.”
- Cicero (from his work “Cato Maior de Senectute” / On Old Age)
The Discussion
Of course, Cicero was not writing in modern English. The variation might be in translation, but my wife had a habit of putting things into her own words.
But looking at this quote, it could apply to a variety of situations. What if the person had a terminal illness? Within that group, did they see a cure in sight or did they want the pain to end permanently? Without a terminal illness, having Jesus or not having Jesus changes the equation. Do you want that extra year, or do you think ‘Rats, I might have to go on another year like this?’
With my wife, I feel that the medical profession cheated me out of some things. What I was cheated out of might not have mattered. But I don’t know.
I know when the last day was when I did not post anything for that 24-hour span, over 2900 days ago. I keep getting these encouragements from WordPress to keep it up. They help me not forget. I was in the hospital awaiting lithotripsy to remove kidney stones. Since I had been admitted, I had to prove that I could get around on my own after the procedure, but I finally made it home that day. That next weekend, my wife and I were supposed to be at a lake house outside Austin, TX. We could not go because I had to get the stent removed after my procedure. My wife was angry, but later that weekend, she had a medical emergency. A gall stone blocked the gall bladder, pancreas, and liver. The bloodwork indicated a whole body shutdown, but she passed the stone on her own.
That led to having several tests done to approve her for gall bladder surgery. She failed the heart test and was scheduled for open-heart surgery instead.
This gets to my point about not knowing what the doctor knows. She was given ten years until the artificial valve, made of bovine tissue, would have to be replaced. She woke up from the surgery quoting Isaiah 38:5. But it was not God’s plan to give her fifteen more years. The doctor only gave her ten until the valve gave out under normal operations.
Note: Hezekiah was about 39 years old when he became ill. He had become king when he was twenty-five, and it was in the fourteenth year of his reign. My wife was in her upper sixties.
When my wife’s kidneys failed almost exactly two years later, we were told she would live about ten years on dialysis unless she got a kidney transplant and the usual waiting time was about five or six years. But then what they did not say was that she had to still be in good health and young enough to warrant the transplant.
But then, what we also did not know was that kidney dialysis puts chemicals into your blood stream that causes artificial heart valves to fail sooner than normal. We were told about twelve hours before she died.
With her having dialysis three days each week, we could not do much, but if I had known, I would have done more. She had flights to Texas for weddings. I arranged dialysis in Houston, TX, Memphis, TN, and Atlanta, GA, just so she could visit relatives and have some fun. My wife never wanted to talk about the end. In her personal grief, she got stuck in the denial phase. But those last twelve hours, she wanted me to go home and leave her alone. At that point, she knew and all she wanted to do was to see Jesus face to face.
So, I feel that we would have had more “memories,” but with there being pain associated with those memories, would she remember any of it in the next life?
But thinking of the quote from Cicero, maybe you do not want that extra year of life. Maybe you want to know that is all you have so you can finish off the bucket list or simply visit all the relatives to say good-bye.
But I think the doctors are taught to give you false hope. It seems logical that if you have hope, you will cling to that hope. Thus, when the only hope is dying and seeing Jesus, the doctor will lie to you and tell you this next procedure is the game changer. I had a dear friend pass on right after she finished a round of chemo that everyone said those exact words, this round of chemo was “the game changer.”
So, to Cicero I would like to say that his quote is not true in every case. In some cases, the person accepts reality and they know they do not have that extra year. And in some cases, they look at a world of constant pain versus no more pain and to sweeten the deal any more than that, they get to be in the presence of Jesus. Then, they will not hasten their end, but they will prefer it to what they now experience.
Our prayer team leader still sends out prayer instructions to pray for complete healing. Who would think of praying for half healing? And the only pure, complete healing is to pass to the other side of the river, into the arms of Jesus.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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