It was my privilege today to return to the hospital where Nate underwent 14 radiation treatments, Rush University Medical Center in downtown Chicago. He and I first met Dr. Abrams on September 22 last fall, the day we learned of Nate’s fatal cancer. Dr. Abrams was on the team of medical experts who’d analyzed the data before meeting us at that gathering of experts, and who’d participated in gently giving us the shocking news.

Although we saw many new faces that day and shook hands with seven doctors, Dr. Abrams stood out as warm, concerned, sympathetic. He was the one to whom we were being turned over, the one who had already mapped out Nate’s radiation strategy. And he was the one who looked us both in the eyes and realized we didn’t have a clue what was happening on that fateful day. He told me later he decided at the end of that first meeting to “adopt” us both, wanting to be our soft place to fall, and he made good on that private commitment throughout those horrendous six weeks. He’s still making good on it, proven today by his invitation to have another conversation with me.

Both Nate and I liked Dr. Abrams immediately. He knew his stuff, but beyond that, he cared about us, our whole family, not just his cancer patient. Today as we talked, he asked about our children, wanting to know how they were coping with the loss of their father. He asked about me, too, and what I was doing with my time. When I told him it seems to be getting more difficult to live without Nate, he nodded with understanding.

I thanked the doctor for putting me together with the Rush media department, from which came the opportunity to post Nate’s story on the hospital “In Person” web page. And when I asked if he’d be willing to contribute a post to www.GettingThroughThis.com, he didn’t hesitate. “Just give me an assignment,” he said, with a smile.

Dr. Abrams fascinates me. We are different at our centers, one an Orthodox Jew, the other a Christian. I respect him highly and am astounded by his compassionate doctoring. We also have much common ground, beginning with Nate, who is the reason for our meeting in the first place. And we both find deep satisfaction in the relationships of our large families. We also share an interest in talking about the dying part of life and spent some time today discussing the universality of mortality.

Today I had a chance to “meet” his family as he proudly showed me a succession of photos from when his children were little and he was a young man, through to each child’s wedding and now several grandchildren. And although he willingly adopted us/me six months ago, Dr. Abrams and I are not so much parent and child anymore but friends. I am indeed grateful.

“Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man.” (Psalm 112:4)

I love to pray. As I see it, there’s no richer activity on this earth. After all, prayer is direct communication with Almighty God. What could possibly top that?

I didn’t always see prayer this way, though. Growing up, our family prayed like many other families: at mealtime…

• “Dear Lord, we thank thee for this food,
• We pray thee bless it, to our good.
• Help us live thy name to praise
• In all we do, through all our days. Amen.”

…and at bedtime. Mom would take turns kneeling beside each of our beds, praying different prayers over us. And of course I remember bowing my head in Sunday school and church.

But two distinct childhood experiences planted fertile seeds of prayer in me. The first occurred when I was eight. My sister Mary, age nine, was playing with a neighbor child who wanted to light a fire in his yard. Mary watched as he poured gasoline over twigs and papers, also splashing it on her jeans. When he threw in the match, a fireball engulfed everything at once, including Mary’s pants. The boy raced from his yard, through ours and into our house yelling, “Mary’s on fire! Mary’s on fire!”

It was Saturday, and Dad was home. He ran out the kitchen door, grabbing a throw rug as he stepped over it, hoping to smother the flames. As we rounded the garage, Mary came limping toward us, the fire out but her jeans charred and still smoking. She’d rolled herself in the dirt, which had smothered the flames.

Dad carried her inside, and as her whimpers grew to sharp cries, he gently tried to cut off her jeans to assess the damage. But Mary’s pain was acute, and the cloth had melted into her skin. Mom was weeping, holding our little brother, and suddenly my whole world felt like it was coming to an end.

I was told to stay out of the way and couldn’t do anything to help, but I did think of one thing. I ran to the living room, looked up at the ceiling and said, “Oh God, don’t let Mary die!”

After she underwent skin graft surgery and spent several weeks in the hospital, my prayer was answered in the affirmative. God let Mary live, and a little girl’s faith in the power of prayer started to grow.

The other defining incident occurred when I was 12. Our family received a phone call that caused Mom to wail like I’d never heard before as she hollered, “No! No! No!”

Our cousin had been killed in a car crash at 17. (Tomorrow’s blog) Once again I felt like we were all coming undone with the catastrophe of that night. But Dad took action and gave us hope. He said, “We better pray.”

The five of us kneeled down next to my sister’s bed, and he prayed while we cried. I don’t remember his words, but I do remember his urgency to get to prayer. And a middle-school girl’s faith in the power of prayer took another growth spurt.

As I got older, problems multiplied and decisions with consequence needed to be made. I found myself pursuing conversation with God more and more, needy for his involvement. (The December 12^th post describes this journey.)

Today, as a widow with an empty nest, I have few demands on my time and no set schedule, letting me pray an hour or so a day. (By the way, reader, you factor into a nice chunk of that.) Prayer also whets my appetite for face to face conversation with Christ, an extravagance I know will one day be mine. Likewise, it can one day be yours.

As a child, I could never have understood why anyone would want to pray an hour a day. But if I live long enough, I hope to be praying even more than that.

^“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a (wo)man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12a)

The trouble with losing a marriage partner is that half of the whole is then missing. We’re usually drawn to a mate who’s got what we lack, which is, of course, the reason for most marital spatting. But maturity and years bring a willingness to let go of unrealistic expectations of each other in categories where the mate isn’t skilled to produce good work.

One Saturday back when we had five children, I had a homemaker’s meltdown. Nate usually worked on Saturdays, preparing for the week to come, but pressures had built at home, and I asked him for help. I spent the week compiling chore lists for the children and for him. My goal was to pass out a list and its accompanying job supplies to each person, then exit to run errands. Later I’d return to find every task completed.

While jangling my keys, I delivered the grand finale to my meltdown. “You people don’t help enough around here, and the place is falling down around us. It’s time to be responsible. Just do what’s on your list and get it done all the way.” Then I left.

One of Nate’s assignments was to hang a clothing bar in a closet for coats and out-of-season clothes. I left him with everything he needed and hoped for the best. Knowing Nate’s skill-set didn’t include a mechanical bent, I wondered how he’d do.

When I returned, the kids, their lists completed child-style, had scattered into the neighborhood, and Nate was cleaning the kitchen. He was glad to see me and said, “The bar is up, and the clothes are hanging on it.” Like an excited kid he said, “Come and look!”

He was right about the bar being up and the clothes hanging on it, but my eye shot to the back of the closet where large nail holes dotted every half inch on the wall, left to right, like a computer period-key gone wild. He smiled and said, “I had a little trouble finding the studs, but it’s up there good and solid.”

That dotted line was my object lesson for the duration: don’t ask Nate (or anyone) to do a job he’s not capable of doing well. The truth is, hanging that clothes bar was on my skill-list, not his. I knew about that when I asked him, so I got what I deserved. Just before we moved last summer, we spackled the holes and painted the wall. And he was right. That bar was still up there good and solid. He’d finished it “all the way.”

Today was a tough grieving day for me because of the truth of that story. Nate’s natural skill-set, working on all numbers-related projects, handling insurance companies, playing phone tag, remembering when payments are due, researching everything, planning ahead, has been removed from our partnership, and I’m needing it, needing him. After spending four hours on the phone with multiple insurance companies and enduring a parade of wait-times, I’d failed on several counts. But moving to internet projects, I hoped to do better.

Concentrating hard to pay bills on line by myself for the first time, I failed at that, too, unable to make it “stick”. I stood up in front of the computer and burst into tears, longing to have Nate back. I cried off my mascara, then put some more on, but in a few minutes had cried it off again.

I told myself that people who never marry somehow manage to figure out how to do things outside their natural expertise, so I should, too. The problem is that in marriage, partners learn to lean on each other for opposite abilities. Although Nate and I hadn’t mastered that, after forty years, we’d come a long way.

My marriage ended when Nate died. His ended, too, but he’s not missing me like I’m missing him. I guess the conclusion should be that when someone is sorely missed, the relationship must have been a good one. I know I’ll never be the same without him.

When life ends, love doesn’t. And the raw truth is, when a spouse dies, love only continues to grow.

“Christ, who is the head of his body, the church, makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” (Ephesians 4:15b-16)