#35, July 9, 2015, All Tied Up

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

 I am tied to Dave’s health condition and attitude on any given day and don’t know how to get untied without loving less at the same time. I want to love him and empathize, but don’t know how to do it without sinking down with him on the days he feels so sick and discouraged. 

His illness is not a straight line. Some days, he smiles even in weakness and some he can barely raise his eyes above the rim of his dizziness and weakness. I can’t make any of it go away. I can’t protect him. I can, however, walk with him, witness to his weariness and discomfort. I can show him that I will be here no matter what even when we are both afraid.

So, yesterday, when Knute came over and asked me how Dave was doing, I just cried. He, Dave, was so discouraged, so weak and tired of being sick. Then later, he took a nap, went to rehab, and was better. That’s when I got it. The minute he felt better, I did too.

That’s OK up to a point, but doesn’t include much trust in God. Somehow, it has to be possible to enter completely in while still trusting that God will be holding me. And He will. I know it. This is way past any of my own ability to lift myself out of it. I have to enter in, resting in God, and let Him hold me up.

#33, July 6, 2015, Pain

 

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

 If I allow myself to love, I am without defense. 

If I allow myself to love, I will be undone. 

I will faint and wail and know pain to my very core. I am starting to feel it already, in moments like hot lightening, like cruel killing explosions that blot out everything else but blinding pain. 

If I let myself love, I feel like I will not survive this.

Image: SCI Total Fitness

#32, July 3, 2105, Smelling Breakfast

Sitting in bed thinking about what it was like at Kathy's to smell breakfast cooking before I got up—the luxury of someone else doing something warm and delicious while I lay in, snug and still. I never thought that there would ever come a place when I would yearn for that—someone to take care of me in that distant intimacy. Now, if it comes ever again, it will undoubtedly be in some nursing home where I’ll have to share a room with another old lady, undoubtedly someone who snores and farts like an old dog. I like this better, I think.

Today is full of have-tos: cats, breakfast for Dave, Knute, and Bryan (my fault—it’s the only thing I know how to do and Bryan asked for biscuits and gravy), Dave to PT, some kind of supper. As easy as these are, I am not mustering any want-tos.

Instead, these days are perfect—sunny and 70’s. I want to be in this day. Maybe I’ll pick some of the easy blackcaps and make something sweet with them.

Trying to reach for something I want to, not what I have to, and can’t quite get my hand around it. But then, Dave must be sick, Bryan must be alone, Jean must drive to see us, Audrey must wake up without John again. The musts form life, I guess. The wants are only frosting. They’ll make me sick if I have too much.

#31, June 30, 2015, The Breathing

The last day of June. Cool nights, warm days. Gentle. Beautiful.

Just spent a couple of days at Kathy’s in Milwaukee and on the first morning, fell on my knees in gratitude without completely knowing why. But it had something to do with the lifting of illness and of worry and of responsibility while knowing Dave was safe. And as I lay in bed yesterday, listening to him cough—he coughs so much now—I think about how he gets no break from it. I have the physical care of him, but he has the disease. He never gets to take a free, unburdened breath.

This is what I want—to find the beauty among all of this—the promise and the poem. It has to be here somewhere. Breath is not life, but in the breathing, in the beating of our hearts, life rises.

Image: from Motor Impairment

#30, June 25, 2015, Where to Stand

For my own sanity, I have to admit that I am suffering—and not able to appreciate every day the privilege of caring for Dave. There is frustration, too—the disappointment of lost abilities and canceled plans, the contradiction of how he looks and sounds with what he says, the weariness of all that needs to be done.

I am almost always tired. I would like to say that it is not the sacrifice that wearies me, but sometimes it is. Bryan is coming home this weekend so I can go to Milwaukee and that much is good, but there is anxiety in being away, too. 

I want it to be over.

I want him back healthy.

I will not get what I want.

So what is the purpose of this place? I am in school—God’s school. I am learning empathy, obedience, patience, unselfishness. I am learning to seek pleasure in and hope for what is promised rather than what is happening. This is my training. This is my war. I did not earn it, but it is given me for my betterment by God. If I am to succeed, I must find firm purchase in Him alone.

#29, June 22, 2015, Aiming to Soar

Second day of summer. Dreamed about getting a job in the courthouse, woke with the excitement of it. But that, of course, is not possible.

Read about the holiness of subjecting ourselves to one another—how God is both training and restraining me.

Dave dreams almost every night and likes to go for drives to look at the lush countryside. It is life for him. The green hills fill him with delight.

Maybe I will start to take him to rehab. It seems like he is getting weaker—eating less and losing vitality again. Like his body sinks. Would like to see his spirit, at least, soar. I wonder if I can help him?

Image: Chapman Cultural Center

#28, June 21, 2015, Not Amused

So here we are, at the longest days of the year, and I want to taste the loveliness of life, and lean into it, and be wrapped in it. Instead, I feel beset by trouble.

The whole cat thing still bothers me and I don’t know why. Then this weekend, Bryan came home to treat Dave to two things he wanted to do—a concert and a good French dinner—and Dave was too ill to do either of them. 

Feeling trapped by unchangeable circumstance. People crowd in and I’m feeling like I need to be alone. I’ve often said that to love God is to accept what comes my way as OK. Not doing so well at that just now. 

Oddly, I do best when nothing presses—no visitors, no holidays, no outside commitments. These days, even when they bring hardship, go more smoothly. They don’t ask more than I can give. Add one more thing, one more hard or unexpected need or requirement, and I am dismantled.

So am I reacting wrong in design or implementation? In implementation, without doubt. I don’t trust after all. Circumstances still drive me over the top, steal my peace. I feel undone.

Today is Sunday and as I read my Bible and pray it, as I study a book about monastic culture, I realize a couple of things. First, that monks made no apology for seeking eternal meanings in everything they did or read. I have been mocked for this, thought too high and mighty that I couldn’t or didn’t want to enjoy a large dose of simple entertainment. 

But, and the 2^nd thing—I’m wondering whether my current unease results from reading a good but not eternally significant Stephen King book and, at the same time, passing odd chunks of time playing a computer game. This morning, as I settle into serious reading, the knot in my stomach loosens and rattled nerves soothe a bit. Maybe I am not made to be amused.

Image: PinCaption

#27, June 19, 2015, Another Dead Cat

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

I’m writing this as a matter of record because I haven’t yet worked it out—maybe I don’t want to.

 One of Dave’s cats took ill yesterday—panting and not coming upstairs. Weak looking. Reluctantly, I made an appointment at the vet, letting Dave go to PT by himself. I stopped at Robin’s on the way there and when I got to the vet, I let the cat out of its carrier and she seemed sick, but relatively normal. When the doctor walked into the room, however, the cat went stiff and stuck her tongue out, gasping. He doc applied the stethoscope. The cat was dead. Just like that. Without any preamble, right in the middle of its life, wanting to get on with other things. Alive one minute and dead the next. When I got home and buried her, I kept thinking it was a mistake. She was still warm. But her eyes, they were all cloudy.

So this is the way it goes, I keep thinking. I’d never see anything die before. It just—goes. And I wonder now, is this the way it’s going to be? Not with warning, but suddenly, with no goodbye? It could. It happened to Robin and Nick.

The odd part is all the life that surrounded it. Meeting Robin’s boyfriend and buying strawberries, talking to Bryan about today’s dinner plans. None of that changed.

The cat didn’t look dead, either, except for her eyes. And all I wanted to do was apologize for every casual brush-off I’d given her—only a cat—and one of the other 12 we still have—unwilling sharers of this life. Something I really didn’t want but didn’t want to die either.

So, I know this—I will still have massive regrets. There are no do-overs.

Oh, God, have mercy.

And He says, I AM.

#26, June 16, 2015, Harvest

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

Summer has settled in. Mowed the lawn in shorts and tank yesterday—can come outside in nearly nothing and feel warm full through, then today smart from a mild sunburn on my back. Yesterday, picked two bunches of lettuce, each as big as my head, way beyond anything I’ve ever grown before. Tasted them with fresh strawberries. Unbelievable. Should have picked only one lettuce, but had to feel the size of them, fill my arms with them, the wonder of finally growing something as rich as them.

Today it’s so humid that these pages feel thick, but the humidity brings a lushness. The day is just starting. The mockoranges bloom and share their sweetness. A breeze stirs the leaves. And this is life. A new day.

We tried an overnight in Decorah and I think that, for Dave, the experience was mixed. We met Knute and Nancy there—spent a wonderful evening, but the effort of sleeping away from home was exhausting for him. He was very quiet last night, inscrutable. We will see how he feels today.

For me, to be back at the Winneshiek Hotel felt like home. Not sure what that means, but I did so like to sink down in the tub. I may have had one glass of wine too many, and my stomach suffered, but other than that, for me it was near perfect and I knew it would be as we walked in. We got a room facing the beautiful main street, window open, curtains blowing in the wind.

This day I start at home but outside, having mowed and put everything outside in order yesterday so I can enjoy it without a feeling of necessity today. This is my life. Yes, I would change some things if I could, but you, Lord, have ordained it as it is, and it still bears some sweetness. I love you, sweet Lord. Thank you for these breaths.

Image: madaboutgardening.com

#25, June 12/14, 2015, The Engineer

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

Yesterday, I was telling Robin that I was tired of this—of being nurse rather than wife, of being married at all. I do not want Dave to die, but this life, this marriage, is wan and pale in the face of his illness.

Then today, I read in LeClerq about monastic culture and the desire for God, and about suffering and its purpose—how sin and suffering, both physical and spiritual illness—bind us to earth. They draw us so that we can yearn for God. That is their purpose—to show us what we so desperately lack so that we can yearn for, reach for, what God supplies.

That’s what Acts 17 says. God engineers circumstance for the sole purpose of drawing us to Him. And Paul’s thorn in his flesh was God’s way of keeping him near.

We keep thinking that God wants us to be happy, but what He really wants is for us to be happy with Him. He will ruin all other happiness.

LeClerq confirms that there are 3 levels of approaching God, all useful in their place.

1. Reading about Him, about holy living. Talking about it and trying to behave like the holy men and women we admire.

2. Reading the Bible carefully and actively. Learning exactly what Jesus and what God did, incorporating them into action.

3. Prayer that brings me before God, opening myself to His direct touch, letting go of humanity in preference to Him and His word, work, and intention.

It is this last that I have done very little, but I have to remember all the richness I have known in the times I have yielded to it.

I think about how I have lost the habit of yearning for God and begun yearning instead for life. No wonder I feel frustrated sometimes. I already have as much of life as is permitted me. God, however, and the perfection of His heaven, that I can reach for. It has no bottom.

Image from: I Waste So Much Time

#24, June 6, 2015, Single Thread

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

 

The yard is lush and green. I harvested spinach yesterday and planted more. The sun is already halfway across the eastern sky at 7:30 in the morning. And I’m still fighting my life, battling for something not given right now. It’s no use trying to chisel out some normalcy. I have to decide—have to dive into what I’m given.

There’s a sweetness I’m missing because I don’t want to give in to it. I’m looking for normalcy and don’t know what it is. It’s not anything I want. It’s not even what Dave wants.

All I know is that it’s Dave’s job to be sick and mine to care for him as well as I can. But even in that, we can carve out some joy together. I keep trying to get ready to be alone, keep rushing what will come after, but there’s no doing that.

I want to do what we can do now. I want to smile and laugh and love each other. We can still do that. There is summer left and on the days he can, we can take drives or breathe in some green somewhere. He would like that and so would I. And there is the pleasure of pleasing him.

One single thread of spider silk is hanging from the top of the arbor all the way to the arm of my chair. All I would have to do break it is to wave a careless arm and it would be gone. But it shines in the sun. I think I will leave it.

I need to stop running away from my life in the name of saving it. I need to demolish the compartments I have built and am encouraged to build for protection. I need to slide all the way in. Because God is good, there is something beautiful there. The moments of life escape so easily. Like this one.

image: Jack Woodville London

#22, May 30, 2015, Shedding

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

Midnight.

A day full of awareness of the passage of time.

Attending Katie’s wedding—them so young and Dave in a walker.

Then Bryan brought a friend to buy the tractor and take it home with him and he brought his two children, ages 8 and 4, who called Dave “the old man” and me grandma.

Then Davie, Bryan’s oldest friend, posted a video taken at the race track on September 1, 1985, when we were all, those of us who are old now, the same ages as our children are today—in the primes of our lives and looking it, but having no awareness of being there. Just like our children do not have now.

I think I would give something to feel that strong blood moving again, but my soul is occupied these days with shedding a body no longer worthy of it, one that can no longer participate in that kind of glory.

But we had it, that glory. Full, ripe, and bursting with juice. Oh, we had it.

image: sharonreed.me

#21, May 28, 2015, Peeling Apart

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

 

It’s 6:30AM and the sun is shining completely over the horizon and content with its temporary command of both horizons. 

I’ve been trying to think what’s different. Old people are fond of saying that they still feel young inside, like they were 20 still, and full of hope and as agile as if every possibility still offered itself. That’s true. I still think that if I tried hard enough, I could bench press 200 pounds again, or do an hour’s worth of vigorous aerobics, or make love all night, or fly. But I can’t. I can’t and am not used to the inability.

Soul and body are beginning to part. The body fails—not my flesh, but memory and quickness—but everything that matters remains the same. It’s supposed to. It has to. That’s the part meant to peel itself off eventually and return to eternity.

image: stylecraze.com

#20, May 24, 2015, Striding

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

 I’m starting to get a sense of what’s different. It’s not just getting old and it’s not just tending to an ever-weakening Dave with all the accompanying sadness. It’s making decisions, taking independent-feeling steps that, for the first time, do not lead from one man to another, not even from one person to another. I am not striving, but striding. Not wanting to have, but wanting to be. I feel, at least today, strong and stable—less cowed, less cornered. I think I’m learning now, nearer the end of my life, how to live it.

image: youtube.com

#23, June 5, 2015, Doing Nothing

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

I took one of the cats to the vet the other day—his hair is falling out in great hunks leaving bald patches of pink skin. He both thyroid and kidney disease. The vet just shrugged her shoulders. The diseases exist in a kind of mutual stasis—treating one would accelerate the other. Do nothing, she said. There is no good way to prolong or ease his life now.

And I thought of Dave.

image: InnerSelf.com

#19, May 18, 2015, How Great Thou Art

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

  

This is what’s bothering me—I am not happy and don’t know how to be. Dave is dying—I saw it yesterday when he wasn’t strong enough to make himself some toast—and I am bound to him as he does so. There’s nothing to be done about this other than to do it for however long it takes. Nothing in this is happy—not the doing of it and not what comes at the end.

But there is something else in the middle of it—something that does not die and can make me happy. I am alive—we are alive—in Christ. 

As I write this, I see the sun as it brings its first full glow above an expectant horizon. The day’s turning is constant. God still upholds the same world He created and saved. I have messed up everybody and everything, but God holds it all fast within the grasp of the only sure hand there is. 

This is more than Good News, more than a purely spiritual saving. This is the fiber of life. It is breathing. It is smiling and crying. It is holding and being held. It is the very assurance I’ve been waiting for so desperately. This is the declaration of and confidence, absolute confidence, in a love that won’t fall short. Not ever. 

It is terrible, you know. But it has to be that way, because it is the only love that fully acknowledges the horrible shortcomings of the beloved—me. The cross knows what I am and loves anyway, and in the only way possible. How can I not be happy knowing that? What danger can any part of this living throw up in the face of it? This is why I am safe in Christ. 

You, sweet God, have defeated not only death, but every danger that threatens my soul. My body is already breaking down, but You are holding me up. Every smile, every pure laugh I have ever known has been in expectation of this one—the only one not leaning on intelligence or strength or circumstances of any kind, but on the magnificence of creation itself, and the plan, and provision ordained for men and women before it ever came to be. 

And it is all because You are great beyond comprehension, able beyond understanding, and loving every single moment. 

I don’t deserve it, but You don’t care.

image: christiansongtracks.com

#18, May 16, 2015, What’s Left

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

 

I’ve been so tired. It’s not like I’m so busy, though. I am, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the reason. I’m just tired—a bone weariness that’s deeper, almost oppressive. It has nothing to do with work or sleep.

I’m not depressed, but it’s hard to be happy. It is possible, however, to be satisfied, to be comforted. What’s missing is the ability to be carefree.

So God is denying me the assurance of warning. In its place, He is saying that He and only He will control this and I have to trust Him.

image: flickr.com

#17, May 14, 2015, No Alarm

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

 I learned something yesterday—something in a new way, anyhow.

That dream—the one about God warning me when something is wrong with Dave—it meant nothing. 

Yesterday, while I was in Madison at the spa and shopping, Dave went PT and ended up in the ER, and I had no inkling that anything was wrong. Granted, he only needed fluids again, but he had to manage on his own while I was off having fun.

So I get powerful feelings when nothing is wrong and none at all when something is. So God gives me a thousand gifts, but not intuition. I can’t depend on feelings or inklings.

What do I do with that? I’m not sure. It feels, in my circumstances, like a handicap. What can I do? Accommodate. Guess. Assume I won’t know and try to arrange things to keep us all out of danger, keep us both safe. 

It turned out to be nothing and Dave was fine, or as fine as he gets these days, but still... What does love demand of me?

image: isotope221.com

#16, May 11, 2015, What I Fear

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

Reading today about peace and the impossibility of finding it here on earth—hunger, illness, sin—and the list of what plagues us is a lot longer. Dreamed last night about Harriet, Beth’s grandmother, and woke feeling like she had died. It feels like a test of whether God will give me a sense of fear when Dave is in danger.

What I’m looking for is someone I know will look out for me—rescue me when I can’t help myself. I can only do so much. I need to know God is there—know in a quantifiable way—need to see Him acting. Otherwise, I am truly alone. I am more afraid of this than anything else.

image:jeremysaid.com

#15, May 10, 2015, Underwater

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

 Mothers’ Day. 

I was reminded this week for the first time in a long time of all the pain this day used to cause. It’s still there if I reach for it. An echo of it hangs on, but time and grace have brought healing. 

Grace. What the woman at the wine walk called Beth and I. Beauty and Grace. I’ve never been paid a finer compliment by a stranger. 

These days are so beautiful—nights still cool, but I can leave the windows open. 

Dave struggles, though. When days either bring the rain or the promise of it, he breathes as though he’s underwater—heavy and labored. As a result, he’s always tired. I should have expected this, but didn’t. Summer will be hard for him. He’ll have to stay in air conditioning all the time. So grateful we have it.

image; kingofwallpapers.com