Done...at last

Well, the posts are over. Readers who've had enough of them have long since finished reading. For ones that haven't, I offer them complete here, in the book they've become.

Taken one at the time, or in small bunches, they are a rollercoaster of changes in mind and mood, but taken together, their landscape smooths into a cohesive, intentional whole. The best part of the book comes at the end, then, when retrospect has distilled them down to lessons in trust and care.

I am so grateful.

The Last Thread is available on Amazon.com as ebook and in print.
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#53, September 4, 2015, Dry Husk

Read this morning about a couple married 75 years who died within hours in each others’ arms. Of course, if this were normal, it wouldn’t make the news, but I am feeling so completely different, like I have no idea how to love.

I am obedient, trying to keep the promise of my marriage vows (for a change), but sinking deeper with each day, or feeling like it.

The other day, it came to me that no wonder Dave says so often that he’s happy—he finally has the wife he always wanted, one who stays at home with no other job and spends all her days centered on him. And I resent it. I do. But then I listen to him cough and groan and witness again the grace with which he endures.

Is it a privilege to serve him? In the abstract, yes. But I feel stuck at the same time, not wanting to go forward, not wanting to go back, not wanting to stay here. And knowing it doesn’t matter what I want.

I need to focus somewhere else at least part of the time. If I let it, Dave’s illness will take over both our lives and take us down together. I am not sick, though, and I have to figure out how to help him without living his life. I’m not doing very well.

Gospel for today: New wine does not go in old wineskins.

So, God, is this how you make me new?

I am small and you are big.

Is this what it’s like to learn love and compassion? I have been a barren rock, a dry husk. Is this how I am renewed?

Image: A Little Bit Crunchy A Little Bit Rock and Roll

#52, August 31, 2015, The Dark

Have not been sleeping well—I fall into bed deeply tired, but too soon wake up dull and not rested. It’s hard to go back to sleep. Feel heavy from thick, troubling dreams I can’t specifically remember but whose dark mood lingers.

I look for God to lift me, but keep finding the urge to repent instead. That, and a reminder to recall His prior blessings. He is the same God now as He was before, after all. These days just feel dark.

Image: Shutterstock

#51, August 29, 2015, The Look of the Future

Restless and tense two nights running. Afraid of the future. 

Dave starting another round of physical rehab next week, and talking to Zach and Jeremy about remodeling the bathroom in five or six months. Will he be alive in 6 months? Will he be able to use the downstairs bathroom at all during the construction? Even listening to Bryan’s fitful sleep, his snoring, scares me. Anyone visiting, even family, outside our accustomed circle unnerves me. 

I want it to be over. I don’t want it to be over.

Dave’s sister Audrey, after having lost her own husband, looks so worn. Tired of coping. What wore her out? What came before or today’s grief? Probably both. And I’ve started planning for what comes after already. Is that wrong? I hope not. I do know that it sometimes settles me a little. I just don’t want to have to face it all later, afterward. 

But I don’t have to figure it all out today. I can have a short term plan too—like making breakfast, painting the new pantry door, and watching the Packers tonight. It’s doable. Maybe I’ll try to nap.

And I have to trust God for everything else. 

Image: flckr.com

#50, August 26, 2015, Holding all the Threads

Yesterday, Dave ate two protein shakes and three bites from a hamburger all day—and he coughed and coughed. We met Dave and Gayle in Madison and she took one look at him and started to cry.

Today, I read a psalm pleading with God to help, but I do not find myself asking for help. I ask for faith to get through this. Faith and strength in You, God. I feel afraid today.

Dave’s best friend is coming for breakfast today, and his sister comes in town tomorrow for three days. An echocardiogram tomorrow, then I told someone I’d go shopping for a car with them on Sunday or Monday. After that, Dave’s other sister comes at the end of the week. 

Trying to keep all the threads in my hands without letting go and wondering whether Dave will live to another birthday. 

Image: Hobbycraft blog

#49, August 25, 2015, The Promise of Heaven

Long term thinking does more than help me make better decisions. It helps me remember the promises of God for heaven. It helps me recall the perfection of what God has promised and that the best days this life can offer can never approach the bliss of what is coming. I have lost some of this hope and I must get it back.

I am wondering today whether the injustice at our old church has worn on Dave enough to contribute to his weariness—whether he is sicker now because that happened then. It’s possible. I know it still weights heavily on him. There’s nothing to be done about it now, of course, but it does make me think about all of those times in a different way.

Image: jollitakellas.com

#48, August 23, 2015, Perching on a Candle

I’ve lapsed into a pattern that isn’t helping at all. In watching Dave decline, I’ve clung to my own life in a way I haven’t done in a long time. It’s almost like being in a desert out of the midst of which I’m trying to find some life. And while I do this, I’m letting go of God.

I have to start from the beginning again. I have to repent. I have to see my fault and face it. I have to stop doing the same thing over and over. It’s not longer life I need, but more life, eternal life, and I can only find it in an eternal God.

I try to figure out how I got here sometimes and it always comes back to the same thing—short term thinking. Trying to relieve the present discomfort or unhappiness with the most obvious outlet. I have to stop. I have to live for the longer view, and certainly at this point, physical life is not the long view. I’m perching on an ever-burning candle, trying to keep cool while the stub I’m sitting on gets hotter and hotter every day. More candle is not the answer. A safe place to land is.

There is no answer, no solution, to my situation. It can’t be fixed. When I was unhappy at home, I didn’t equip myself for an independent future, but married a man I didn’t love. When I was unhappy with him, I didn’t learn anything from my situation. Instead, I moved in with someone exciting. I never once in all of these changes did an honorable thing. When I got tired of being possessed but not celebrated, I looked again to yet another man, and finally then had the wit to see that no man had the answer I was looking for. Same thing happened with money. I loved making a lot of it, but what I had to do to get it stripped my spirit bare.

You gave me more than life, God. In some ways, You gave me the first life I’d known. But almost immediately afterward, You dismantled its architecture to show me that You could make it stand anyway—stand still if I have no church, no job, no marriage. This is why I cry to you, because although I have friends and family to love me, there is no one but You to help.

 Image: Pinterest

#47, August 20, 2015, Leveling Off

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life:

Somehow, things have leveled off—it feels like we are on a plateau of sorts that is less vulnerable.

A new normal  revealed itself when I wanted to take Carol to Iowa to see her new granddaughter and Dave declared he didn’t need a babysitter. Indeed, he didn’t. I left him overnight and he was fine. More than that would not have been as fine, but he had food and didn’t have to do much. 

If he sleeps, he’s pretty OK. If he doesn’t sleep, he’s pretty rough and weak. And we’ve had a few cooler days when he’s slept. That is good.

So my leash is a bit longer that I thought it was and I’m using the extra length with a degree of comfort—on both our parts. And it’s funny that Dave’s ability to see me make good decisions without input from him has helped, too. Also good. 

I don’t know how long these times will last, but I’m grateful for them.

Image: pixabay.com

#46, August 13, 2015, Which Greater Love?

 This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the last wonderful, sad year of Dave's life:

Where is the greater love? Is it in the flush of romance, when the beloved is beautiful and precious, ruddy and strong? When he reaches out for me with passion and burns to the touch? 

Or is it when every day is much like the one before, when the heaving landscape has smoothed into a plateau and no adventure promises? Weakness and kindness walk hand in hand in this place, and memory fills the territory anticipation once held. 

There is no answer to this. It just is, and I must be content. Otherwise, I will be condemned to ingratitude. 

No matter how I feel, God is here. He has laid down this path for me because He loves me. I must walk it because I love Him. 

I feel a fresh breeze.

Image: from our family album, taken circa 1979

#45, August 7, 2015, Releasing the Stranglehold

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal written during that last wonderful sad year of Dave's life:

Something changed when I thought about yielding to God. Something let go. I don’t know what, but I’m not as tied up. 

First, it seems now like this season may be longer than I wanted or planned. I understand it is more out of my hands than I did before and the living I do in it is not so strangling. Sometimes, when Dave coughs those deep, wracking coughs or is so weary he can hardly walk, it’s easy to get annoyed or discouraged, but there are equal times of easier days.

Making decisions regarding what he wants for his future is going to be very helpful. He is deciding now, so I don’t have to. It sets me free, free enough that I have already decided, and continue to decide, what I am willing to do.

I think I have released at least a part of my stranglehold on our lives, and I can breathe a bit. So thankful for this respite, this time of greater ease.

Image: thebohemianjournalist.com

#44, August 3, 2015, What Would Happen?

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during that last, sad, wonderful year of Dave's life.

Thinking this morning about how desperately I’ve been trying to control what is happening around me, and how miserably I fail. 

Yesterday’s lesson in church was about how God is the Bread of Life. He provides constantly for me in real, palpable ways. He feeds me. He keeps me safe. He goes before me in trouble. But I don’t let Him.

What would happen if I finally yielded to God? I can hardly imagine.

I would say:

I am not responsible for Dave—his happiness, his health.

I cannot plan either for the rest of his life or my own after he goes.

I cannot rely on our savings for my financial well being.

I must spend more energy on responding to what is happening than planning for what may never happen.

I must be content with not knowing and learn to trust.

I don’t know any of these things.

I do not serve either God or Dave by doing. I serve them by believing and trusting.

Image: walkworthy.org

#43, August 2, 2015, The Problem of Unlearning

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the wonderful sad last year of Dave's life.

Sometimes I just want to be done with this, but even as I think that, am not reconciled with what that means. 

Dave is not done, is not ready, and I can’t imagine what it must be like to be him. His life has wrung itself out more than mine, that’s true, but I don’t think he loves his life any less than I do.

Yesterday, he wanted to invite his cousin to come stay here overnight. I have never met this cousin and suddenly he feels this new attachment to him and a list of other cousins he’s never met. I told him that I didn’t feel up to it when in truth I just tired of all the fuss around entertaining strangers. Maybe I should be willing to give it a try, but I just don’t want to.

I can’t imagine a world, my world, without Dave in it. In fact, I can’t have one. Dave and I have been together 37 years and I think of how each thing I do every day will affect him. Everything. Every day. I will never shed that habit. Never. 

A widow, then, must be alone only in the physical sense—the old practical concerns no longer apply. But the thought processes—I will never have enough time to unlearn those.

#42, July 31, 2015, Alive

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the wonderful sad last year of Dave's life.

Woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. 

I feel all my bones and the muscles attached to them, my flesh working still, almost strong. I feel all the hungers still and the pleasure of their satisfaction. 

A time will come when there’s no more room for hungers—I know that from being sick even that short time—when pain and trouble of body take up all the room living gives them. But that time is not now. Not for me. Not yet.

Dave is well on his way there—he’s good at not pining over what he does not have, but I remember what he has done for me.

I remember with gratitude that he has let me use him for more than 30 years as a substitute for loving. He let me stir up his intensity and use it as a launching pad for my own until now even the memory---the senses of it, all its touch and smell and taste—is enough to touch off my own.

I am still living even as he is learning how to die.

A breeze stirs the curtains this early morning. I hear a dove. The air brings a slight chill.

I feel alive.

 
Image: theimpactnews.com

#41, July 30, 2015, The Beat of his Heart

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the sad, wonderful, las year of Dave's life. 

And I thought yesterday’s doc appointment would be routine.

Hardly.

 

Though Dave’s kidney function and indeed every other so far measured system seems stable, he continues to fail. He lost another five pounds and is weaker than before. This doc suggested some kind of heart pump weakness—his heart, which every other doc said worked strong still—and his EKG’s show that. But it turns out that a heart’s electrical beat doesn’t measure its ability to pump, or the efficiency of its valves, or a possible blockage of artery. And it would make sense of his shifting blood pressures and his general weakness.

But to think that his heart, that obedient and faithful muscle, would just slow and tire, then finally just stop—I can’t imagine such a betrayal. I hear it like a dirge just running out of strength and quitting.

Everything in me screams, NO.

Image: reference.com

#40, July 28, 2015, Slow Leak

This is the next in the series of transcription from my journal, written during the wonderful, sad, last year of Dave's life.

I feel myself getting bitter sometimes, a bitterness that steps into the place of disappointed love, of life that has failed. It is the weight of what has passed me by, the pressure of the dissatisfaction that remains the stark necessity of breaths I take in the absence of hope.

I don’t see the purpose in these days. I have to rest to get better and Dave presses me relentlessly to sit down but for all those moments of rest, my life leaks out slowly and without remarking. 

I rail not against the night, but against a porous fog that absorbs all moments and returns no feeling, allows neither elation nor despair. I have no patience for this. I do not aim to. 

So little life remains and I am forced to spend what there is like this.

Image: St. Paul Faucet Repair

#39, July 27, 2015 So Big

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the wonderful, sad, last year of Dave's life.
 

I am starting to understand that most people don’t care about the same things I do. 

I want to know reasons for things—why life rolls out the way it does. I want to recognize and understand whatever firm ground life can offer. But a lot of people, most people, are satisfied by coping with whatever circumstances come and to wreak out some enjoyment from them. 

Enjoyment is not enough for me. I want understanding and realization of beauty, and the touch of joy. I want to exult, knowing that the exultation comes from God. Life, as good as it is, is not enough. I don’t want just to have it. I want to participate in its glory. 

And I’m convinced that’s possible. There have been too many times where the glory’s been close, so close and I could just fall into it.

This is the way I love God. You, Oh Lord, are the only unfailing connection to glory.

I went outside yesterday and felt the close rays of summer heat. I breathed in and felt the sun come in, like sliding into a bath surrounded by the smell and sight of flowers. Lush.

I am always comfortable in the house now—it is always 72 degrees because otherwise Dave can’t breathe. And I’m glad for it. I rest and sleep easily. 

But life waits beyond the windows—the feel of sun on my back and on my face when I look up. 

Dave doesn’t like open expanses. He wants to be surrounded by trees. Give me wind and sun and the feel of wide oceans. Let me see the horizon from edge to edge uninterrupted. 

So Big.

Image: Shutterstock

#38, July 25, 2015, Quicksand

This is the next in a series of transcripts from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

 So, on top of all of this, I get sick, too. Whatever reserves Dave had, he has used them in taking me to the hospital in the middle of the night and sitting with me there. And I have Lyme’s, an illness of lingering pain and confinement. 

People came to care for us for awhile. I can’t drive. I improve slowly. He improves hardly at all. 

I am more than marginalized. I feel forgotten. I do not function except at a very low level. My spirit is deflated. I feel frustrated at every turn. I don’t want too many people around, but feel abandoned when they are not. Almost nothing gets done. 

This is the oddest desert that has ever swallowed me. It is quicksand. My strength has fled.

Image: BuzzFeed

#34, July 8, 2015, From Whence Strength Comes

This is another transcription from the journal I kept during that last sad, wonderful year of Dave's life. It got lost in the order, however, the situation and feelings it describes still fit.

Today’s canticle: “It is not by strength that one prevails.” That is surely true of these times.

I watch Dave sinking every day, getting weaker and more tired, the light slowly draining from him and I feel like someone is scooping out my innards with a spoon. I can’t imagine a world without him in it.

I don’t even know why I’m crying. Feeling sorry for myself, for all we planned and will not have, for his pain and bone weariness.

He was so tired yesterday. Took him for a ride, but had little pleasure in it.

It feels like this will be his last summer, the last times he will feel a warm breeze or see green hills. I want to fill him up with it, but some days he just can’t.

And there is nothing to do for it. My own body does not betray me as it does him and I am thankful for that—I can walk through all the days and get everything done but it’s not a physical strength that makes it possible. It’s something else—the life force I still don’t understand—it’s a river of the Lord that runs through bearing me up with it, carrying me along without ability or consent. It takes me unwillingly where I must go. I move my arms and legs. I gasp and shout, but the impetus comes from without. I am surviving but do not like this one bit.

Image: onehdwallpaper.com

#37, July 14, 2015, Another Respite

This is the next in a series of transcripts from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

What kind of respite is this?

Is it a time like the last one, in which Dave showed signs of life and hope, only to collapse into months of weakness? It seems so. But even if it is only a breath of relief for us both, it is still that. Breath. And we are enjoying it. Rides that bring real enjoyment of the beauty of this verdant world along with the spirit of adventure that has so marked our lives together.

And today he has planned another—an actual day trip I did not think we would ever do again.

The canticles I read every morning provide melodic backdrop to all of this, too. Related experiences full of love and fear and rescue and faith. Reminders of God’s constant awareness and over-arching care. Whatever happens, I do not need to fear.

Image: Pixabay

#36, July 12, 2015, Finding the Plateau

This is the next in a series of transcripts from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

May and June flew by, but this month dallies. Last week and this coming week are stunningly free on engagements and I revel in them.

Last week, Dave was almost sullen—weak and tired and without smiles. Then on Friday, after the rehab gals sent him to the ER again, he perked up. Something stabilized, even before they did anything or gave him the fluids they eventually gave him. After we left the ER, we went shopping at the co-op and to a fish fry in which he ate all of his and some of mine. He was good, very good, and remains so through Saturday and into today.

And what do I do? I keep wondering whether these are his last good days. There is no relaxing into them. It feels like a long, slow descent punctuated by the occasional sunny plateau that provides a bit of rest. I am doing this very badly, but I don’t know what else to do.

Live each day? I live, but am still not loving except with whatever steadfast care I can bring. This is the most confusing season.

Image: youtube.com