Watching a friend who is watching their child die

This isn't my story to tell, but I cry or come close to it every time I think about it or talk about it.

My friend's 6-year-old son is dying of cancer — an inoperable tumor in his right lung — with maybe a few more weeks for his parents and sister to soak up as much time and love as they possibly can. Disney World? Check. Hot air balloon ride? Check. Thanksgiving and Christmas and rock climbing and Chuck E. Cheese with as much family as can be crammed into a house and then some? Check, check, check and check.

Enough time?

Never.

I can't wrap my head around this. The thought of losing a child has always terrified me in the prospect of ever being a parent.

How do you deal with it? My friend, all things considered, is pretty damn chipper. Nolan's in high spirits, they had a fabulous time at Disney World, the family is great, he was gonna bathe his kids in turpentine after the Chuck E. Cheese adventure, the kids are smiling/laughing/having a great time, Nolan is in relatively little pain and not yet on oxygen, and we are all forbidden from feeling sorry for any of them.

I don't know how to do that.

I don't know how to not feel sorry for this guy, his wife, their daughter, their parents and siblings who, in a very short amount of time, will have a Nolan-shaped hole in their lives. "Everyone, please — stop pitying us," Eric wrote shortly after the final, terminal diagnosis. "Our son is going to be in a better place, and we're grateful for having had the opportunity to know and love him." Something along those lines.

What do we pray for? We have faith in a God who has healed others; we also have stark, short-timed reality and pediatric hospice nurses staring us in the face. Do we pray for healing? More time? Or just comfort for Nolan and peace for his family — knowing that smiling little boy soon won't hurt any more, that it won't be a struggle to breathe, that his fourth fight with the obscenity that cancer is will ultimately be the end of the fight?

I know God is big, that His peace surpasses anything we can understand, and that in the midst of roaring, soul-shaking storms, His is the small, calming voice that comes on a whisper of a breeze.

I know that.

My faith, though, feels so small -- like a whisp of smoke that will be obliterated in that raging wind. How do I offer such a fragile faith to God on behalf of my friend and his sick little boy?

So in my tiny, feeble-feeling faith, I'm asking you please pray for peace and comfort — for Eric, Beth, Claire, Nolan and everyone who loves them and is hurting now and will be hurting for a long time.