Category Archives: Saying Goodbye

Happy anniversary… or maybe not.

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Last night I was tidying up Nate’s night stand. Next to the half-glass of Gatorade was a rainbow assortment of Post-it notes, his long-term method of staying organized. Most were ready for the trash and none had any interest to me, but I peeled them up for him anyway. Stuck to the table-top at the bottom there was one that interested me. It said: 11/29/09, 40, carok.

Nate was noting our upcoming anniversary, our fortieth, reminding himself to be prepared. But what about the word on the bottom of his Post-it? I figured it was probably something in Russian. Nate has always studied languages and enjoyed a college minor in Russian. He speaks it fluently and loves practicing his vocabulary words. All of us know a smattering of Russian as a result of his consistent practicing on us.

This morning, on the way to radiation #11, I tucked his anniversary Post-it into my purse. As we waited for treatment, I handed it to him.

“Our anniversary,” he said, smiling.

“Yes, but what’s that last word?”

“It’s ‘forty’ in Russian.”

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Lately, we’re holding hands a great deal. Today I studied his hand as I held it in the radiation waiting room. His wedding band has never been off since I slid it on during our ceremony at Moody Church, in 1969. Since that day, he’s always been fully committed to me, protecting, providing, participating.

Forty years ago, each of us made vows to the other that were meant to be honored “til death do us part,” and it looks like death is about to part us. The official rending began last night when a hospital bed arrived at our house around 8:00 p.m. The flight of stairs to our bedroom had become a mountain Nate could no longer safely climb. A near fall and frequent stumbles, even though others have been “under-arming him” both directions on the steps, had motivated us to request the bed.

But last night as I put my head on the pillow in a room twenty feet from Nate’s new main floor “bedroom”, our physical separation settled hard on me. He was needy but was too far away for me to hold his hand… or hear his breathing or feel his chest move up and down. My bed was lonely, a sad foretaste of the future. Will we be together to commemorate our fortieth? Or will he be far away in another realm entirely, out of sight and out of touch?

As I tucked Nate in tonight after a busy day that wore him out, I asked how he liked his new bed. Too tired to speak, he just nodded approval. After I bent down to kiss him, I said, “I love you.” Too tired to reciprocate, he winked at me instead. In forty years, I can’t ever remember him winking at me. It was youthful, cute and loaded with meaning, and it made me kiss him again. He’ll never miss me like I’m going to miss him.

“Love bears all things. Love endures all things. Love never fails.” (Parts of 1 Corinthians 13:4, 7,8)

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I can’t see the future.

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Nate’s pain woke him with the message that it was time for his meds. After he took the pills, we spent time chatting in bed, waiting for relief to come. We talked about when the kids were little, remembering funny things they’d said. Then suddenly he became introspective.

“Life’s interesting,” he said. “Its like you come up against a wall that’s ten feet tall but you can’t see over it. On the other side is your future. You want to see it, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t.”

I believe he’s beginning to absorb the truth of his pancreatic cancer, the raw statistic that of 37,000 people who had this disease last year in our country, 95% of them died within their year of diagnosis. Nate is a numbers man. He’s logical. He understands bad odds when he reads them.

“I want you to dig out my life insurance policy today so I can refresh my mind about its terms,” he said. “We also need to find my will and re-read it. And I want to be sure you have power of attorney. That’ll make everything easier when I’m not around.”

I wanted to sit bolt upright and yell, “Stop! What about the other 5%? Maybe that’ll be you!” But something inside my head said, “Don’t interrupt. Let him say what’s on his mind.” It was God I’m sure, making me bite my lip. When Nate finished talking, I agreed to find the files.

After a morning nap, he re-opened the subject. “Can you hunt for those documents now?” I found them, and then sat quietly with my Coke Zero, watching Nate study the life insurance policy. He knit his brow and then nodded slightly.

“I think you’ll be ok, even if you live into your nineties.”

“It’s awful to think of you not being here,” I said, fighting tears but trying to sound like we were having an everyday conversation. “Maybe we could take a trip in the near future, like to Greenfield Village or someplace.” But both of us knew my suggestion wasn’t compatible with the immediate future we could already see.

“Sure,” he said, wanting to make me happy. “Good idea.”

After he studied all the documents, he seemed to be satisfied. He rested his head back on the chair, folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes.

“You know,” he said, “even if I could jump up and get a quick look over that wall into my future, by the time I really got there, it would have changed anyway.” And in that statement, there was a letting go of the pressure to control what he knows he cannot.

Twice in recent days Nelson has quoted this phenomenal Proverb:

“A man’s heart devises his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

Nate has made his plans. They include insurance, a will, power of attorney and other things. But today he accepted the truth that he can’t control what actually happens. God will be the one to say when Nate’s earthly steps stop and his heavenly ones begin. But there is nothing to fear. Quite the contrary, its all good news:

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Reality sometimes bites our kids.

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We gathered the kids around the dining room table. “You all know how tight the money’s been around here,” Nate started. “We’ve tried to cut back every way we could. Some of you have had to drop out of college. All of you have jobs. We don’t go on vacations or buy new cars anymore. But this stuff hasn’t been enough.

There is one thing, though, that we could do…” he faltered… “that would help us alot… that we’re going to have to do.” He paused. “We need to sell our house.”

After a hush during which I was sure I heard the roll of thunder, Birgitta, 13, responded with horror on her face.

“You mean MOVE?!”

My personal tears anticipating this moment had been shed days before, during prayer times for the kids looking at us now. My hope had been to remain tearless at that moment and speak light into the storm cloud forming.

“Maybe we’ll move to the country,” I chirped in a voice too high to be mine. “Weezi, you might get your own horse!” Our 15 year old looked at me through eyes full of tears, pursing her lips to hold back a sob… and words.

Nelson, 31, having moved out long ago, pulled toward optimism by pointing out how the four brothers could use country acreage to store rattle-trap cars and non-functioning go-carts. Although we appreciated his try, our main focus was the younger kids, and they were not doing well.

Getting through our half-hour meeting was like trying to swallow a pill that refused to go down. Reality sometimes bites, and it was biting our children. Although we’d been tempted to sugar-coat the news, we thought it better to let them have the whole truth, bitter that it was.

Five of our seven children had known no other home. The oldest two had only a handful of early memories of our prior house. As we watched their facial expressions define different inner struggles, it felt like we were yanking baby bunnies from the safety and familiarity of their snug burrow.

“Do we absolutely have to move? Who will buy our house? When will we have to leave? Will we take the animals? Will I have my own room?”

Our only accurate answer was, “We don’t know.”

The contract was formalized, and a FOR SALE sign went up in the yard. Gradually, over weeks and eventually months, resistance melted. Our address didn’t change. Other than occasional visitors marching through the rooms with clipboards, family life continued on.

Little did we know that by the time a serious buyer with a healthy checkbook would finally surface four years later, most of us would have come to believe the house would never sell, and we would never move.