Pop’s Page

By a quirk of the calendar, the days of the week in July, 2008, fall on the same dates as they did in July, 2003.   So, it’s hard not to re-live those days five years ago when our family walked in “the valley of the shadow.”

The following was written shortly after Susan’s death.  I repost it here as a tribute to her memory, and to the Lord’s unfailing love in a time of sorrow.

A Death Observed

The last “good” day of Susan’s life was Friday, July 11.  By “good” I mean when she wasn’t sick in bed at the hospital or at home.   In the preceding week every other day was good followed by a bad day, when she was very ill.   For example, on Wednesday the 9th, she had her regular visit with Dr. Savin, and felt good enough to go shopping at Sam’s where we stocked up food for all the family that was arriving.  David came in from Atlanta that evening, and Susan prepared a wonderful dinner for him and 14 others-just like old times.    We couldn’t keep her sitting down.   She was up serving everyone just like she always did.

But then on Wednesday night she got very sick with nausea and pain.   Even the new pain killers were barely enough to comfort her.   Finally, at 4 AM,  they kicked in and she slept until 1:45 PM on the 10th, our 38th wedding anniversary. Traditionally, we go out with the Clellands on our joint anniversary: they, too, were married on July 10, 1965.   But the previous night’s struggles were too much for her.   We told Dave and Gayle that we would try to go out with them the following week when Susan was feeling better, and would save our energies for the party the family was throwing for us on the 11th.

Sure enough Susan had a good night on the 10th.   I was exhausted when we finally came to bed, and lay flat on my back waiting to fall asleep.   Susan came to bed slightly later, and asked if I wanted to have a time of prayer with her.   I said, “Sugar, I’m just too tired to even pray.”   With that, she climbed into bed, and then kneeled above me and began praying out loud.   She thanked the Lord for me her husband of 38 years.   She thanked Him for the good care that I was giving her during her illness.   She thanked Him for our family, and prayed for each family member by name.    It was a moving prayer.   I wished I had had a tape recorder so that now I could savor every word.   But it brought peace to my soul because I knew deep inside where she lived-whatever was about to happen-that she would be all right.   And so would I.

The daylight hours of the 11th turned out to be good ones for Susan, as Elizabeth arrived from Atlanta to join David.   This evening was to be the zenith, because all 16 family members who were in town were available for dinner at the new Luna Del Noche in Plano.   It was a wonderful evening of celebration and laughter and enjoying one another.  Peter even captured the two of us on his digital camera, both smiling, and Susan looking like her beautiful self in the new blue slinky knit outfit that Shari had bought her from Chico’s.

Then came Friday night.   It was the worst of all: so much nausea that Susan could not even hold down any pain killers.   By Saturday noon, she was already running a high temperature and in great discomfort.   So much so that when Dr. Rogoff told us to come to the ER he said “call an ambulance if she can’t make it by car.”  And so I did, and shortly there were 5 firemen standing in our bedroom followed by two paramedics from the ambulance.   I rode in the front of the ambulance as we traveled-without sirens-down to Medical City.  In the ER they began to stabilize her pain and temperature and nausea.   Fortunately, we were able to get a private room for her on the 8th floor of the South Tower (the oncology floor) that Saturday afternoon.  Thus began the process of assessing what was wrong.  After three tries they finally got a NG tube down into her stomach through her nose to help clear out the gastric juices that were causing the nausea.  Then at 11 PM we were called down to Radiology for a CT scan.

I spent Saturday night with her in her room on a sleeper sofa they rolled in.   Sunday morning Shari came to relieve me and I went home for a nap and a shower.  As I entered her room around noon on Sunday I found Susan sitting on the floor on the side of the bed away from all the pump lines.   Apparently, as Shari left the room for just a moment to show some visitors to the elevator, Susan-in a semi-delirious state from the morphine they were giving her-decided to get up and go to the bathroom.   In her disorientation she got out on the wrong side of the bed, and pulled out both her NG tube and the IV going into her mediport.   In the process she fell down next to the bed.   Fortunately, she had not seriously injured herself, but the NG tube and port line had to be reinstalled once again.  And from then on we decided someone had to be with her 24/7.

After this episode Shari related the conversation that she and Susan had with Dr. Munoz while I was away.   “Your abdomen is full of cancer, sweetie.   There is nothing more I can do.  You need to enter a hospice program.”

Monday came more testing-of the worse sort-down in Radiology.   They took her down in a wheelchair, and made her drink awful stuff that made her nauseous.   Finally, I got them to find a gurney for her to lie on while she waited for more X-rays to be taken.   Somehow we managed to get through this and back to her room where she could finally get some rest.   With the previous day’s conversation with Dr. Munoz in mind, I steeled myself for Dr. Savin’s visit.   As it turned out both he and Dr. Rogoff appeared outside Susan’s door within a few minutes of each other.    “It’s a full intestinal blockage,” they reported.  “Is there anything more you can do?” I asked.  “No, they replied.   It’s time to enter hospice.”    “How much longer does she have?” I asked.   “Days to weeks,” Dr. Savin replied.   Then Dr. Rogoff asked Dr. Savin if we should continue TPN-the nutritional supplement Susan had been getting through her mediport-and on which she had gained 11 pounds in the preceding two weeks.   “No,” Dr. Savin replied, ” we would just be feeding the tumor and not the patient.”    This meant, of course, that Susan would slowly starve to death-with the attendant symptoms that this would produce.   This was hard news, indeed.   For three years I had thrown myself into project managing her treatment.   From Texas Oncology to M. D. Anderson to Dr. Munoz, I had tried to find anything and everything I could to battle this disease.   My hard drive is filled with articles on ovarian cancer and its treatment.   Yet, standing above all my research stood a single finding: “the average survival time for advanced ovarian cancer patients is 37.5 months.”   On July 1, Susan had been battling the disease exactly 38 months.  During that entire period I had hoped that the Lord, in His mercy, either would heal Susan supernaturally, or else would providentially provide a “silver bullet” that would heal her medically.  I had hoped that TLK286 would be that bullet, but it proved not to be the case.   So, this was devastating news, particularly coming from Dr. Savin, who is the eternal optimist.    This was really the end.

It now remained only to make Susan as comfortable as possible during her final days.   A major issue was her sensitivity to morphine, and the delirium it produced.     Between Dr. Savin and a pain specialist it was decided that hydromorphone (dilaudid) would be a good substitute, since chemically it was like hydrocodone (vicodin) which she tolerated well.  This switch in pain medications did seem to cause improvement in Susan’s mental condition.   However, between the disease itself and the lack of nutrition there was a strong tendency for her to go in and out of delusional periods.    This continued to worsen for her remaining days.    Once, in the hospital, she called out to her mother to come back into the room.    Since the dying often see family and friends that have gone on before, I was never sure as to whether this was that experience, or simply a “waking dream” that Susan seemed to have more and more of in her final days.

In many ways the delusional state that Susan was in was more painful than watching her suffer the physical pain itself.    Susan was the most together person I ever met.   Rarely would she get flustered.   On the few occasions when this happened, I was the cause-doing something totally wrong, or silly, or mean.   In the delusional state she began talking to all sorts of people that weren’t there.    Sometimes she would catch herself, and say “there I go again.”   Her last days in hospice at home became increasingly delusional until she got to the point where she no longer spoke-but I am running ahead of my story.     I share this now because for me, this was the most theologically challenging issue in her illness.   “What good is this type of suffering doing her?” I would ask.   Indeed, it was like her coming down with Alzheimer’s compressed into a single week.   We discussed this among family members, and decided this was a test of faith: my faith, not hers.  Could I trust that God was still showing her and me good, even though she was totally out of her head?   Could Abraham trust that God was showing him good even though he was asked to sacrifice Isaac, the child of the covenant?  The answer to both questions was, “yes.”

The other major issue in terms of Susan’s comfort was the NG tube that was basically a suction line that ran from the port on the wall next to bed, into one of her nostrils, and then down her throat and into her stomach to suck out the gastric juices that the stomach manufactures day and night no matter what else is going on.  This was very uncomfortable for Susan, and we very much wanted to find away to eliminate it.  The first try was on Tuesday (July 15).  Dr. Rogoff wanted to bypass the NG tube by placing another tube from the stomach to the outside.   He attempted to come from the inside out using a probe that he placed down her upper GI tract to guide him.   This failed.   To him it appeared that the tumor was so large that it was blocking any path from the stomach to the outside.

The one good effect of the failed procedure was that the anesthesia allowed Susan to have a very good long sleep, freed from the delusional state that she had been in before.   The next day, Wednesday, she actually felt much better.    By Thursday, however, she was having more pain and more spaciness.    On Friday we were startled when the radiologist entered the room and told us that he thought there was another way to get a line into the stomach.   He would come from outside in, using Xrays to guide him.    After a long period where they gave up on the first Xrays, and sent her to the CT machine, it finally worked.   By going into her side between two ribs they successfully placed a small drain line from her stomach to the outside world.   This was in turned tied to the vacuum line to suck the gastric juices out, bypassing the NG tube.   That evening Dr. Rogoff himself personally removed the NG tube, and Susan looked like herself again, instead of having the elephant-trunk-like appendage attached to her nose.   This was a huge step forward.

Friday was also a big day psychologically for me, because that was the day I called St. Paul Hospice to arrange for Susan’s care at home beginning on Monday.  I was admitting to myself the unthinkable: that Susan’s days in this flesh were numbered.

This week in the hospital was meaningful in a special way, because each night the family gathered around Susan’s bed for “family commotions” as we used to call them.   Someone would read a passage of scripture, and then we would pray and sing the doxology-just like in the old days when the boys were growing up.     One of these evenings was very memorable because Susan was pretty much spacey during the daytime hours.   On this occasion, after the scripture was read-Psalm 103 I believe-someone asked Susan to lead us in prayer.   It was like a light bulb had been switched on in her soul.   She prayed the most marvelous prayer, perfectly lucid, and just like Jacob praying for the 12 tribes before his death.   She prayed for each family member-present or not-by name.    Each intercession was perfectly worded for that person, just where they were in life.   Then she closed by praying that all future generations of our family would know the same blessings that she had experienced, and that each would be faithful to the covenant promises they had received.   We were all deeply moved.   It appeared that the Holy Spirit Himself had descended on Susan to guide her-with groanings too deep for words-to pray the perfect prayer for the occasion, and to pass on her legacy of faith to next generation.

Finally, Monday came, and in the afternoon Susan was transported by a non-emergency ambulance back to our home on Ash Circle.   Peter’s digital photos show her in her new hospital bed in our master bedroom, with that peaceful look on her face.  It was about this time that her agitation and delirium worsened.    I don’t believe she ever really slept for about 72 hours-or else she was continuously sleeping with her eyes wide open.   The conversations with non-present parties continued unabated.   My own workload increased greatly as I became her primary caregiver-supplemented by daily visits from the home health aid, Frances, and by every-other-day visits from the hospice nurse, Mary.  I was administering all kinds of medications into her IV port: zofran, protonix and dilaudid, along with saline containing Mg & K.    I also had to man the portable vacuum pump that continued to drain her stomach while at home.   The first night home I slept next to her on our bed-but sleep was very little.   She continued her talking throughout the night, and I kept adjusting her painkiller to help reduce the groanings that I heard.   I got so little sleep that David insisted that he do the next night-during which he got even less sleep than I did the night before.

During this period Susan’s delirium manifested itself in odd ways.   On one occasion she was convinced that the ceiling fan was falling on her.   On another, she was certain that the old Sanders family photo that hung directly in front of her was cracked, and made me take it away.   At yet another time she screamed out that she had dropped the baby, and it was hurt.   It took me a long time to calm her down after that, and to convince her-if I ever did-that the baby wasn’t real.  Yet once again she would have moments of lucidity.   These would occur during family devotions in the evening-though not as long as in the hospital-or when people would drop by to visit.    On Wednesday, Karen and Jill brought dinner over, and Susan decided to get out of bed and into her wheelchair and go outside.   She greeted Karen correctly by name, but called Jill “Michelle.”   That evening she had her last “meal” sitting at a table.  She was even able to swallow some rice that the ladies had brought over.   That evening Terrie dropped by, and we had prayer with her as she prepared for her major surgery on Friday.   This time, when asked to pray, Susan forgot what she was praying for.  She prayed a fine prayer about children, but it had nothing to do with Terrie or her operation.

By Thursday morning the delirium worsened and I called the hospice nurse to see if they could send out something to help Susan sleep.  While I was waiting for this to be delivered Judy Hewlett dropped by to give us a CD of Stephen Jones’ wedding.   Susan was lucid enough to talk to Judy, and I left them alone.   Afterward, I noted Judy in tears as she realized the state of decline in Susan’s condition.   This conversation and those she had with us that day were the last of her life.   Shortly after noon the prescribed ativan arrived and I immediately gave it to her in her IV line.   Very shortly afterward, she went to sleep, and from then on she was never really awake.

At this point the pace of life slowed down somewhat, since we no longer had to watch Susan to keep her from doing something that could injure herself.   I continued giving her her meds on schedule, but now I could actually sleep through the night next to her.    I would take my arm an extend it into her bed and hold her hand-which by now had lost its grip.   We continued to have nightly “vespers” as we called them, with a lot of singing and scripture, and then me closing with prayer.   There was no indication that Susan heard any of this, for now she had become unresponsive to any stimuli.

On Sunday morning, with only Susan and I in the room, I turned to Proverbs 31.     This has been a controversial passage in our family because some younger members felt that “becoming a Proverbs 31 woman” was overhyped in our conservative Christian culture.  But for me, and for her, it described Susan’s life perfectly.   I read the passage out loud to her-with no indication that she heard it.   Then I told her that she had been the perfect wife and mother for our family, and how much I loved her.  I kissed her, but her lips were unresponsive-while previously, no matter what she was going through, she always kissed back.

By Sunday afternoon, Susan’s breathing changed, and we became sufficiently alarmed that we summoned the hospice nurse on call to come out and examine her.    She had us adjust her medications, and start giving her oxygen from the portable pump that hospice had supplied.   The nurse indicated that Susan’s pulse was still strong, and didn’t seem to think that we were entering a critical phase.  After she left something happened that totally unnerved me.    Susan’s right side had been propped up with pillows to keep her comfortable.   One of the pillows slipped through the gap between the bed and the side rails, and as it did, there was nothing to hold Susan’s right arm.  It swung lifelessly down in the gap-just as you might see happen to a dead body in a movie.   As I repositioned her arm, and then lifted her other arm, I found that she was totally lifeless.   Except for her heartbeat and her breathing, she seemed all but dead.   I was heartbroken.

Sunday night was much like other recent nights until about 4 AM.   Then I heard Susan groaning in a way that convinced me that she was in much pain.  I quickly arose and began giving her pain boosters.   By about 5 AM her groaning abated and I felt secure enough to go back to bed next to her.   Then I was awakened at 8:30  by a new sound: a sound of her breathing in a new way.   As I watched her, I saw that to get enough air-even with the oxygen on max, she had to tilt her head up and open her mouth and gasp.   She did this every 5 seconds or so, and it looked so pathetic that I was completely disheartened.    Yet when I felt her pulse it was strong.

At around 11 AM  Frances came in to give Susan her bath and put her in fresh clothes.   She had been off during the weekend, and the rest of us were so afraid of hurting Susan that we decided not to move her or try to change her outfit.     We left the room while Frances, in her own gentle way, gave Susan her bath and dressed in her in new clothes.   When we came back in there she was, absolutely beautiful with her hair shampooed and combed under her customary red hat, and her makeup applied perfectly.   Yet, she still struggled to get air.    Frances looked at us and said, “it won’t be long now.”  “If anyone has not released her, you should do it now.”    I replied, “I have tried to release her, but I’m having a hard time doing it.”   Then without warning I burst into uncontrollable sobs.   Shari came and embraced me, and for several minutes we stood there hugging and crying.   Frances said her goodbyes, just as Mary came in.   In the room at that time besides Mary were myself, Shari, David, Elizabeth, Peter and Megan.    Mary looked at Susan’s breathing and said that if anyone had not said what they needed to they should do it now.   Shari replied that this was the great thing about our family, that whatever needed to be said had been said long ago.

At that point I kissed Susan for the last time and said,  “Sugar, you’re going to see Jesus face to face!”   Her eyes opened at that moment, and she seemed to be able to see all that were in the room.   Then she closed them, and let out one more breath.   And then she was gone.

Somehow, I managed to pray out loud, thanking the Lord for His promises to her, and for the life she had lived, and for the blessing she had been to all of us.  Then we sang the first verse of  “Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners.”  Then  I asked Peter to read Philippians 3:7ff:
 

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith– that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus
Susan’s earthly race was over.   She now was receiving at that moment the prize she had longed for.    As Mary began the necessary processes for readying Susan’s body for transport, we continued to sit in the room.   Susan’s body was partially upright in bed, her head tilted slightly to the right, and her arm resting gently on a pillow next to her.  She seemed totally at peace.   And so were we, though our loss is beyond measuring. Yet someone-Shari I think-observed: “this was so like Susan.  She had to be properly dressed and made up before she took her leave to heaven.”  We all chuckled knowingly, even as the tears streamed down our faces.

I was struck by the following article in the Wall St. Journal about our 40th president’s faith in our Savior. I was also struck by the fact that Reagan’s mother spelled her first name exactly the same way as did my mom, with an “e” on the end: “Nelle”.

His Last Crusade
By PAUL KENGOR
June 11, 2004; Page W13

A few years ago I began researching a book on Ronald Reagan — in particular, on the personal role he played, during his White House years, in the attack on Soviet communism. Most books on the subject, up to that point, had more to say about the administration than the man.

I began with the official presidential-documents collection, a record of every presidential statement. I read innumerable Reagan letters and vetted the massive presidential handwriting file at the Reagan Library, which included all documents in his hand. I spoke to cabinet officials, political associates and people whose lives had crossed his own, including a 93-year-old woman in a nursing home in Dixon, Ill., who was baptized with Reagan in 1922.

I was surprised to find, in all this material, a long record of religious comment. I was startled, for instance, to note that Reagan offered a parable about Jesus and Judas at the Garden of Gethsemane for a toast at the 1988 Moscow Summit — in the heart of the evil empire itself. Speaking of the “evil empire,” it was a revelation to me to learn that Reagan wrote probably half the speech that made that phrase famous, delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983. I also encountered items like a March 1978 letter from Reagan to a liberal Methodist minister who doubted Christ’s divinity. The future president quoted John 1, 10 and 14 and employed C.S. Lewis’s lapidary “liar, Lord, or lunatic” argument about Christ’s biblical claims.

It became clear that, for all the sniping of his detractors, Reagan was a devout Christian, a Protestant who felt a keen fellowship with Catholics and Jews. He was obsessed, during his presidency, with helping Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union. He raised the issue so often that Mikhail Gorbachev snapped at him more than once for “lecturing” him on human rights.

True, Reagan did not attend church regularly when he occupied the White House (as his critics have noted). But he had done so in California (a fact they ignore). Thanks to the assassination attempt early in his presidency, Reagan’s security apparatus was especially onerous: A SWAT team had to accompany him to church. Guards had to search his fellow worshipers for weapons before they went in to pray. After attending church for a few Sundays, Reagan decided to quit going. A lack of faith had nothing to do with it.

And how, exactly, did Reagan’s faith affect his presidency? In many ways, but perhaps most of all in his view of Soviet communism. Reagan was born not long before the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, and he lived to watch communism’s collapse. During his presidency he called for a “crusade” to undermine the Soviet regime. It wasn’t just the regime’s repressive nature that inspired a sense of mission in him, or its ghastly record of blood and suffering. It was the official atheism of Soviet communism that especially angered Reagan and convinced him that he was dealing with an “evil” adversary.

“There is sin and evil in the world,” he told the evangelicals in March 1983, “and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.” He saw his confrontation with communism as a spiritual one. He told a joint session of the Irish National Parliament in June 1984 that the “struggle between freedom and totalitarianism today” was ultimately not a test of arms or missiles “but a test of faith and spirit.” It was, he said, a “spiritual struggle.” The Soviets did not fail to notice such rhetoric. Their official news agency, Tass, declared: “President Reagan uses religion with particular zeal to back his anti-Soviet policy.”

So much has been said about Ronald Reagan this week, and more will be said today at his funeral ceremonies. Some would-be eulogists have pointed to the way he invigorated the American economy and restored American morale. Some have called him, not without reason, the man who won the Cold War. My bet is, though, that Reagan would himself have liked to be eulogized as a man of God who exercised a form of practical Christianity — the kind that he learned from his mother, Nelle, and from the preachers at the little Disciples of Christ church in Dixon in the 1920s. Surprised? So was I.

Mr. Kengor, the author of “God and Ronald Reagan,” teaches political science at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108690583450134441,00.html

Today was a bit of a turning point for me in church. During our married life it was Susan’s custom to reach over during the pastoral prayer and put her beautiful and delicate hand in mine. This act was a symbol of our union as man and wife as we bowed before our Maker and joined with the Body of Christ in prayer for our brothers and sisters. In the last 3 years part of the prayer was always for her and for us. Of all the segments of the worship service, the pastoral prayer has been the hardest for me since Susan’s death. There has been no hand to hold.

Today, Jamie sat next to her uncle, and just like her aunt, at the pastoral prayer she reached over and put her hand under and around my arm. I responded by placing my hand over hers. Before long I was fishing for my handkerchief to loan to her as the tears flowed down her cheeks. I appreciated Jamie’s reaching out to me like this, and the fact that I could handle it emotionally was evidence that I am making progress in my grieving. I was also touched by the prayer of Mark Peck, filling in for Pastor Dave today, when he prayed explicitly for me in his prayer and asked the Lord to comfort me in my grief. I have been.

As I think about Susan each day, and where she is now, I often think of that prayer she prayed before her death based on Revelation 4. That’s the chapter that talks about the 24 elders and four living creatures and the heavenly host casting down their golden crowns before the throne of the Lord. So it was particularly meaningful today when we sang the hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling (529 in the New Trinity). The last stanza of that hymn goes like this:

Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Now whenever I sing this hymn I have this picture in my mind of Susan and Mom, clothed in their glorious heavenly attire, singing in perfect and wondrous voices along with the heavenly host, casting their crowns before the Great King. Think how it must have been when they arrived. They truly would have been “lost in wonder” as they drank in the heavenly sights that go on forever, and as they are overwhelmed by the love and praise that pours out of the heavenly chorus in welcome, and as they are greeted by Him Who is the Author and Finisher of their faith….and ours.

Several readers of this blog have noted that it has been awhile since an update. That’s testimony, I suppose, to things “getting back to (the new) normal.” My mother’s house is on the market, her personal effects are being categorized for an upcoming estate sale, roofers are coming by to give me bids on the replacement of my hail-damaged roof, new tires are on my car, a new battery was installed at Sears when the old one almost conked out at grief group the other night, and so it goes. I seem to find something almost every day to completely tie up my time, and never quite get around to blogging, or ….grieving.

This weekend, for instance, my niece Jamie (correction: she likes now to be called “Jamison”) is in town to visit her favorite uncle over Fall break (and other persons whom I’m not at liberty to disclose at this present time). Last night, to celebrate her arrival we hosted a dinner party at my house—the first one since that memorable day on July 9 that Susan hosted her last such party. The initial guest list escalated to 19 persons, but then got scaled back to 16 as a result of some last minute cancellations. As Jamie and I—with help from niece Megan—began arranging the tables and chairs and plates and serving utensils and so on, we kept asking ourselves, “how would Susan have done it?” Her presence permeated our planning process. This was assisted by the ever present photo in which her eyes seem to follow you everywhere you tread in her former domain (and which was alluded to by another blogger on this site). While Jamie and I tried to follow Susan’s expectations for “a proper dinner party” as much as we could, we did come up with our own rather radical innovations. For example we carried the kitchen table—up and over the sofa in the family room—and added it to the already elongated dining room table. We tried not to look at Susan’s photo while we did this—we secretly feared what she might have said about such an enterprise. But it turned out OK, and all of the guests had a comfortable place to sit: with the fossils including yours truly at the kitchen table end, and the younger folks down by Jamie who assumed the ultimate place of honor in Susan’s usual chair at the “foot” of the table. She did a wonderful job doing all the things that Susan would have done: serving the lasagna to each guest individually by hand, making sure we each had our drinks (I assisted somewhat in this), bringing out dessert and coffee at the end, etc. Susan would have been proud of her niece, and I thought I detected a bit more of a smile on that famous photo by the time the meal ended.

That smile began to vanish a bit when cleanup started. In Susan’s day we would never have begun cleanup with the guests still there. No, no we would not. But the younger, modern approach is to use the manpower (and womanpower) while you have it. So before I could intervene with a “but Susan would have….” the dishes were all in the dishwasher, the floors were being vacuumed, the kitchen table put back where it belonged, the leaves eliminated from the dining room table, and soon you couldn’t even tell there had been a meal served at all. These folks were efficient!

As the utensils were being put away suddenly two guests observed what in their view was a serious breach of kitchen sanitation. There, in the utensil drawer along with ladles and tongs and electric knife blades was an ordinary carpenter’s hammer. And in the cabinet below, next to the barbequing implements was a huge rubber mallet. Suddenly, icy stares were directed my way. “Pop, why do you allow these dirty shop tools to reside with your clean cooking things?” They clearly were thinking to themselves that this newly-minted bachelor was lax in letting shop and kitchen commingle. “But, but….” I sputtered, “it’s not me. Susan put them there. She used them all the time.” I went on to explain that many afternoons as I whiled away the time upstairs in my study, I would hear this terrific pounding from downstairs. “Sugar, what’s happening?” I would shout down the stairs. “Just making dinner. Don’t worry about it,” came the reply. I never did figure out exactly what she was pounding on at those times. All I know is that dinner was always superb, and the meat was always real tender.”

I have in front of me as I write two pictures of my beloved, taken about 30 years apart. In the first she is 28, or maybe 29, I’m not sure of the date. She is absolutely gorgeous in this picture, in the red dress she made herself and highlighted by a long string of white pearls. I was totally infatuated with her. I loved to just sit and look at her because she was so beautiful.

In the second, she is still beautiful. In fact I’ve never seen anyone 59 years old who could compare with her. But it’s clear in this picture that she’s no longer 29. Yet this picture captures a new beauty that has grown in her over the 30 intervening years. A certain maturity and peace that passes understanding.

Which Susan do I truly love? In some sense I can’t love both, because even though they are the same woman, they are also different. When she was still alive—just last year—there was no way for me to go back and kiss that 29 year old I see in that picture, or experience the emerging Susan that was to become the mature Susan that I loved even more.

I know that these words seem somewhat paradoxical and perhaps even contradictory. But they get to an element that was raised by C. S. Lewis in his own grief in the quotation I used in yesterday’s posting. Lewis wanted to have back that circle that touched his circle in yesterday’s life. I do too. But yet if you were to ask me a year ago if I would want to be transported back in time to live again with the 29 year old Susan, I would have had to say “no,” if it meant I couldn’t live with the 59 year old Susan. The latter Susan was more of the “real” Susan than the former one. Sanctification is real. I observed it day-by-day in my beloved. And so, in distinction from Lewis—immersed as he was at the time in his grief—it occurs to me that the future glorified (not just sanctified) Susan that I will someday know will likewise be one I would never want to leave. And so the longing that I shouted yesterday, I WANT HER BACK, is tempered by the sure knowledge that the glorified Susan—seen by, yes, the glorified John Dishman (as she would say it)—will be a far, far better thing. And so, I wait for it in hope.

Yesterday marked the eighth week since Susan’s passage into glory, and my entrance into grief. Perhaps in tribute to the degree of recovery I am making, I was not even home to mark the time, 12:14 pm, of her passing. I was out eating lunch with a good friend on a day chocked full of activity.

Yet that phrase, “degree of recovery” sounds strangely like something someone in AA might say. Instead of saying, “I’m a recovering alcoholic,” I say, “I’m a recovering griever.” And just like alcoholics—who say their recovery goes on until the end of their lives—so I likewise wonder will this grief haunt me until the end of mine?

C. S. Lewis seemed to think so. Long ago, when life was beautiful, and Susan and I were blissfully happy in Morris Township, NJ, I for some reason read the book, “A Grief Observed,” by Lewis which recounts his own grief after the loss of his wife (whom he married for “convenience” after a life of bachelorhood) to cancer. But I lost my copy in various moves and was forced to obtain a copy from the Plano Public Library. I have been devouring the book since. I realized that in reading the book the first time I could hardly relate emotionally to what he was writing. Now I can. Here are some quotes that find deep resonances in my soul.

An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it,’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t. Some funk it altogether. R. has been avoiding me for a week…Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.

This is very much how I have been feeling, except substitute “church” for “club”. Yet the last week has been much better. I’ve had some very significant conversations with friends that I love about what I’m going through and it has helped both of us. I now routinely say to anyone I meet, “I give you permission to talk about Susan. In fact, I desperately want to talk about her. To remember her. To not forget her.”

To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel both of them thinking, ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is now.’

And this is true. I am a walking advertisement for the fact of a fallen world. Seeing the reality of my grief, the incredible pain and sorrow of it, tells those who encounter me that all attempts to cover up the fact of “death by sin” will some day be futile even for them. And oh how I must fight the resentment of those couples my age. The immediate thought that rises is, “They will live the blessedness of growing old together, of having each other to cling to as they struggle with the aging process. But I will have a cold bed, sad Christmases with only me to select the grandchildren’s presents, and a lonely death with no one to find me until days later.”

Today I had to meet a man I haven’t seen for ten years. And all the time I had thought I was remembering him well—how he looked and spoke and the sort of thing he said. The first five minutes of the real man shattered the image completely. Not that he had changed. On the contrary. I kept on thinking, ‘Yes, of course, of course. I’d forgotten that he thought that—disliked this, or knew so-and-so—or jerked his head back that way.’ I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again. But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years. How can I hope that this will not happen to my memory of H [the initial he uses for his late wife]? That it is not happening already? Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night—little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes—ten seconds—of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.

How, like Lewis, I fear losing the memory of my precious wife. Will ten years from now her memory be like that of a pleasant day at the lake ten years ago? Will she be no more than that? She, who impacted my life more than anyone else—who as a tool in God’s hands shaped me and molded me by her love and her example and her compassion to me as me—is that what she is destined to become in my mind and memory? I see it happening already, just as he does: the snowflakes falling. I tend to idolize her, remembering all her good points—they are innumerable—and forgetting that she, too, was a sinner saved by grace. Someone asked me recently, “Was she the same with you as she was with us: always loving, always more concerned about others than herself, never complaining about her illness?” “Yes,” I said, “exactly.” But later I realized this was a bit of a distortion. It’s true that even to me she never complained about her cancer or what she was going through. “We know Who’s plan it is, and His plan is perfect,” she said even to me, not just to others. But sometimes she did get crabby with me. She would—yes I admit it—say mean things to me, particularly when it must have been hurting her so much. Yet, she would almost always catch herself doing it, and immediately ask for forgiveness.

A few days ago—at the urging of the book I’m reading about the loss of a spouse—I played a video I took of Susan last Fall. (This is where I have an advantage over Lewis, I can produce many more real images of my wife per unit time than he could back in 1960.) As the tape rolled I saw all those precious mannerisms of her that so charmed my heart. The tilt of her head. The movement of her mouth. The way her eyes sparkled. The timbre of her sweet voice, and its sudden change to sternness at the end when she told me, “now turn that thing off.” What longing for her that tape produced. What joy to see her “alive” again. What terror to know deep down inside that I could not touch that face or kiss those lips or embrace her and just hold her next to me so tightly that I could feel her heart beating next to mine.

Kind people have said to me, ‘She is with God.’ In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable. But I find that this question, however important it may be in itself, is not after all very important in relation to grief. Suppose that the earthly life she and I shared for a few years are in reality only the basis for, or the prelude to, or earthly appearance of, two unimaginable, supercosmic, eternal somethings. Those somethings could be pictured as spheres or globes. Where the plane of Nature cut through them—that is, in earthly life—they appear as two circles (circles are slices of spheres). Two circles that touched. But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me ‘she goes on.’ But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace. On any view whatever, to say ‘H. is dead,’ is to say, ‘All that is gone.’ It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where ‘the former things have passed away.’

Yes! Yes! You’ve said it perfectly, Lewis. That’s exactly how I am viewing it. Pastor Dave rightly preached at her funeral that her sufferings are past, her future glory has begun. I know that. I believe that. I want that for her. But for me I want to have the life that we just had to continue forever. It was so pleasant! But it is now dead. And how that hurts. I WANT HER BACK!!

Today, one day late, I went again to the rose bush. Again, I cut one beautiful rosebud off the bush—sniffed it (I don’t usually do that) and inhaled the delicious rose scent unique to that species. And then I sadly took out the old bloom which has wilted—just like my emotions—and replaced it with the new one. It now sits—full of hope, yet tinged with grief—at the spot next to where she died, and in front of her picture. You know the one. It was on the Christmas card we had made. She’s sitting in a elongated pose in her blue slinky knits smiling at the camera that sweet smile that I will never see again in this life.

It was by sheer luck (or should I say “providence”) that I saw him without him seeing me. As I braked my bike to stop at the overlook at the dam, I caught a glimpse of the back of his head through a small opening in the tall grass. By the time I stopped I was now behind the taller grass where he couldn’t see me even if he turned his head. He was fishing at the bottom of the dam—where the water from Rowlett Creek spills over to form two giant eddies. These eddies actually sweep water from the center of the creek back upstream toward the dam to produce an ideal fishing spot. In the Spring, large sand bass get caught right at the spot where he is fishing, as they try futilely to jump over the twelve foot high impediment to their upstream migration. I never see him here in the Spring, however—only late summer and into Fall.

Usually as I approach this spot, even when I am trying to be stealthy, he sees me. His modus operandi is to have one eye on the dam, and the other eye looking back towards the overlook. And even if I creep slowly to the place where I can just gain visibility of him, he sees me first and takes off. His huge, six foot wingspan, flapping slowly so that his retracted feet just barely miss the surface of the creek, and then with one mighty stroke fifty yards downstream he rises like a giant blue kite that suddenly has caught a fresh breeze and alights on large branch that overhangs the water. He looks back at me and waits, knowing that eventually I will leave and he can return to his lonely fishing spot.

But today is different. His head was turned totally towards the dam as I went by, and he missed spotting me. Now I could view his long blue neck that supports his head and turned-down beak. I want to see more of his big blue body, so I push my bike slowly forward careful not to make a sound. But then, just as always, he sees me and the blue kite maneuver is once again executed.

It occurs to that I never see the fisherman with any other matching blue heron. Is he, like me, a widower? Perhaps he had a mate that used to go fishing with him at the dam, but she came down with a long illness and is now departed. Or maybe they were fishing together and some beast, whose sneaky traits are superior to mine, ambushed his female mate and terminated her life.

But there is another possible scenario. Maybe blue herons by nature live solitary lives. Maybe they are all solitary fishermen, an introvert’s introvert, spending each day alone, except for a few hours a year when they decide they must come together male and female to produce progeny to extend their gene pool.

I’m sure that with enough time and Internet resources I could search this out and determine which of the two scenarios is correct, if either are. But I prefer to think that scenario 1 is right. Then I feel a certain kinship with the lonely fisherman. He was living his life, totally independently, a young heron with a wonderful future, and then “she” came along. And his life was changed forever. For the better. Together they fished , feathered their nest, and raised their brood of baby herons. How happy he was, how good life was with his soul-mate doing the things herons do. And then disaster struck, the children left the nest, and he is left to fish alone at the bottom of the dam.

But then after reflection, I thought of how even the second scenario could produce resonances in me. Thirty-eight years seems like a long time, but from an eternal perspective it is just a few hours of heron-time equivalent. I had a life before “she” came along, just like my friend the fisherman. And now my “she” and “me” are on divergent paths again, just like before our marriage. Oh, we would never have chosen this if left to us. Each day, even each hour, we loved one another more with an attachment that only death could break. Our lines had fallen in very pleasant places. We often talked of simply wanting the life we were living to go on and on and on as we became almost the same person in our thoughts, our words, our loves. Only the Lord could know that there was something better for us than the life we were living. For her it was to be taken to a disembodied glory that is now unimaginable to me until some day I go into that life myself. She is alive, but it is a very different kind of life—a more glorious life—than I am living here. Yet, I am alive here in this world. I have my missions to accomplish, my “fish” to catch like my friend the heron. It’s a lonely life, but it is a life nonetheless and I am called to live it as best I can—-alone.

I climb on my bike to resume my daily route, glancing back to see the fisherman still waiting for his fishing spot to be vacated. “See you tomorrow, friend,” I say half aloud to him. “Perhaps when I come again, I’ll see another smaller matching bird standing by your side, and you will look up at me and wink.”

Why We Are Like We Are
I know that several people may have concerns about my behavior since Susan’s death. “Something’s different with him,” they observe, or “something’s not quite right with how he is behaving and interacting.”

I’ve just found a very helpful book on grieving that I’ve checked out of the library and have been devouring ever since. It’s written by a husband and wife team, each of whom lost their own spouses to death prior to their remarriage. Its focus is on the death of a spouse, and I am finding it to be a very powerful help to me in my grieving process. It’s entitled Getting to the Other Side of Grief: Overcoming the Loss of a Spouse. The female co-author is Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge, a practicing psychologist, and the male author is Robert De Vries, a pastor and teacher. Their use of the Heidelberg Confession (and their location in Grand Rapids) leads me to believe they are members of the Christian Reformed Church. Eventually, on these pages I will attempt to give a full book report. But for now I want to share what they say about the changes that happen to grieving spouses, because they seem to capture a great deal of what I am going through, and I’m guessing that other bereaved folks in our community of friends and acquintances may be exhibiting similar traits that seem strange to the outside world. Hence, my title above of “why we are like what we are” where the we is us grieving folks. Here is the excerpt:

Feelings. Anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, sadness, and depression often emerge during the grief process. They are frequently experienced in a wavelike fashion, where their intensity ebbs and flows. You may initially experience shock or numbness even if your spouse’s death was predicted. This numbness is a normal protective response. Gradually, however, the numbness will dissipate. Anxiety and fear about one’s own survival are not uncommon. Powerful or intense anger may be directed at God, medical personnel, other people, or circumstances. At times anger may be combined with guilt and turned inward. Self blame and shame may come in the form of embarrassment, remorse, and regret. You may exhibit a number of symptoms similar to that of depression, which are associated with the expression of intense grief. Actual clinical depression may occur if these feelings are internalized and not dealt with. Feelings are important and need to be expressed, examined, and worked through over a period of time. Try not to dwell on the negative statements about yourself, since this only attacks your self esteem. You are a valuable person. Keep reminding yourself of your significance and that you did not die when your spouse died.

Behaviors. Grieving people also exhibit a number of common behaviors including crying, preoccupation, absentmindedness, withdrawal from others, detachment from surroundings, decreasing involvement in activities, being unaware of time and/or place, and a general sense of apathy. You may dream about your deceased spouse or sense your spouse’s presence with you. Some bereaved people experience forms of visual or auditory hallucinations–actually thinking they saw or heard their loved one. These reactions are all normal in the initial grieving process. Widowed persons often cling to treasured belongings or some articles of clothing of their deceased spouse. They may find an uncanny closeness and connectedness to their loved one by wearing or focusing on these visual reminders.

Cognitions. Grief also manifests itself through cognitive changes. Widowed people often find they are preoccupied with themselves and the death of their partner, and they are often disinterested in normal activities. They may want to stop the world. After all, a significant person just died; how can the world just keep going on? Often they find it hard to concentrate on normal tasks. They can be confused and really begin to think nothing is important or relevant anymore. The bereaved’s spiritual life may change. Some embrace God and their religious practices more tightly. Others may reject them all together because they feel abandoned by God. Though it may sound strange right now, don’t fight these reactions. Many people who experience the death of a spouse also face a crisis in their faith. But most often, they are able to return to a revitalized faith. So if you are angry at God and want to push him away, at least know that God understands you and what you are going through. If, on the other hand, you are clinging tightly to your faith and are afraid of expressing anger at God, trust that God can tolerate that as well. Eventually you can resolve your spiritual battle and be at peace with yourself and God. Work on the grieving process; God will continue to take care of you.

The noisemakers and party hats sit in their packages unopened on the shelf where Susan had placed them waiting for this date. This was to be the celebration of Nelle Frances Flanery Dishman’s 100th birthday, born on September 14 1903, which as it turned out was her mother’s 19th birthday. The poem that I was to recite commemorating this centenary remains unwritten, only a lingering memory in my mind. And though the National Weather Service predicted that this would be a sunny Sunday, unexpectedly it rained all morning, as if nature itself was shedding tears that my mother was not here with it to celebrate such a noteworthy day.

A year ago we had been quite confident that Mom would “make it” to this date. After all the experts in the actuarial field had noted that once you passed your 95th birthday, your life expectancy actually goes UP! Mom was in great health, had a wonderful mind–and all of us silently thought to ourselves that she would probably outlive Susan, given the latter’s serious illness.

But the Lord had other plans, and so I sit here today–totally alone–probably the only one to remember that this is Mom’s hundredth birthday. Yet, I do not mourn as one who has no hope. Indeed, I picture Mom and Susan and Mom’s mom (we called her “Nannaw”) and Susan’s mom (Helen) sitting before the throne of Jesus rejoicing over the great gift that the Lord gave to our family in the person of Mom individually, and of all four of these much beloved women, collectively.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at Mom’s house, attempting to clean it out prior to selling it. It was like going into a time warp, extending back 5 decades and more. You see, not only was Mom a voracious reader, she felt almost a moral obligation to keep everything she read. Perhaps she wanted to refer back to it some day. Not only that, when my Aunt Ara and Uncle Arving passed on, she felt an obligation to keep many of their books also. Interesting tomes such as a directory of all lawyers specializing in transportation issues in the state of Texas in 1938. And so on. As a result my mother and father had this pressing need to somehow store all these volumes that had accumulated over the years. My dad, who I think secretly wanted to be a welder, constructed a huge “bookshelf” in the hall of their home. I say “bookshelf” because that word doesn’t adequately describe it. It was more like a miniature of the World Trade Center lying on its side. All the supporting elements are made out of iron bars that have been carefully welded together. I have no idea how long it took him to make this work of art, and even less of an idea how he got it from his workshop into the hallway. Of all the items in the house, this is the only one that the realtor specified, “it has to go.” And so I am left with the task, not only of clearing all the books from the shelves, but dismantling the ironwork as well. As I finally found away to remove one of the wooden shelves screwed to the metal works, and carried it out back to the workshop, I pictured in my mind what a sense of pride that my dad must have felt when he carried it in the reverse direction. The last shelf to be placed in his pride and joy, the fruit of his long labor, and his act of love towards my mother to provide her with a way to store all her beloved books. And she would have interpreted it in just this way—a gift of love from her husband of many years expressed in iron and wood instead of the words of affection that he had trouble speaking.

So it was with sadness that I began to deconstruct this symbol of my parents’ love for one another. Some day my own children will haul away the artifacts of love that Susan and I had for each other. Items with a history unknown to them—of great moment in our lives but totally indecipherable to theirs. The hundreds of books I gathered from Mom’s shelves were only worth $25 to the book dealer; yet to her, they had a value not calculable in the crude currency of commerce. She was the last of the great historians of our family, and these books reflect that deep interest and concern to preserve the memories of her ancestors, and times simpler—and in her view no doubt better than our times.

One hundred years seems like a long time. Even 99 years and 4 months—the age at which my mother died—is a long time. Yet, as the psalmist puts it, man’s days are like grass. He (or she) flourishes like a flower of the field, but the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place knows it no more. In contrast the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. He is the God of the living, not the dead. And so, though I cry along with the clouds on this rainy centenary of my mother’s birth at her absence from my life now, I know that these words of men that I discard off the soon-to-be-dismantled shelves will be replaced in glory by the eternal Word of the Lord which can never, no never, be erased.

Happy hundredth, Mom!

I’m afraid my earlier post (below) elicited some unintended consequences. I’ve already had some feedback from brothers who felt it was directed at them personally. For that reason I almost considered taking it off the this blog. However, since it expresses a situation that I think Christian men should be sensitive to, I’m going to leave it up.

However, please know two things: First, I wasn’t directing it at any individual specifically but rather at the community of Christian brothers which I think needs to remember the shortest verse in the Bible is: “Jesus wept”. We, too, must learn to weep with other men.

And secondly, I have met the enemy and it is me. Prior to Susan’s illness and death, I also had real problems coming along side those who mourned. I’m just a dumb engineer who can only relate to inanimate objects. Real people are a threat to me, as my precious wife often pointed out. Any compassion I’ve developed has come from the Lord using her as a model for developing the same loving heart she had.

Finally, my comments came on a day when my own grief sprang up in a surprising way. Perhaps sensitized by last night’s group which dwelled on the need to allow oneself to go through the grief–not around it–I found myself suddenly breaking down in sobs as the magnitude of my loss came home to me unexpectedly. I am doing fine now, but I apologize if the complexities of today’s emotional state has caused anyone anguish as they read the blog below.

Your friend in Christ,
John