This morning, the first of a new year, I started the day by changing my sheets. As I was pulling the old ones off, it occurred to me Nate’s side was unused and still had its neat laundry folds. I studied his side of the bed, pillow still freshly ironed, and all of a sudden I felt very alone. He is completely gone. Permanently. We will never sleep together again. I just didn’t know what to do next.
When Nate and I got married, like all young couples with togetherness on their minds, we couldn’t wait to sleep together. But we did wait. When we finally got married, Nate was a second year law student, and I taught school in a small town. Between us we didn’t have much, but one reason we took the third floor walk-up was its Murphy bed, the kind that folded down from an upright position behind a wide closet door.
This bed had metal bands instead of springs and a mattress flat enough to be a dog bed, but it meant we wouldn’t have to buy a bed. Never mind that it was only twin size. Our thought was, “The closer the better.” We envisioned ourselves cuddled up in the hammock-like middle, and it was a perfect picture.
A few months after we married, we found ourselves the recipients of some beautiful bedroom furniture sent by a college pal looking for a place to “store” it. It was made of Australian satinwood, each piece a work of art. We were grateful to move up in the bed-world to a full size bed and spent 36 years sleeping on it.
But as the decades rolled by, good sleep became more important yet more difficult to get. Our full size bed began to feel small, especially to me, since Nate got three-fourths and I got one-fourth. Then one day out of the blue he said, “How about we buy a bigger bed?”
Not wanting to split up the beautiful bedroom set we were still “storing”, I fought his suggestion until his habit of running his toes along the bottom of my feet started to get to me.
“A bit of love during the night,” he’d say.
“A bit of torture while I’m trying to sleep,” I’d say.
In the end, the satinwood bed was dismantled and put away. For our 60th birthdays which came together, we bought a king size bed. The morning after we spent our first night on it, Nate’s laughter woke me up. He was standing in the doorway with his coffee mug, getting a kick out of something.
“What?” I asked.
“You,” he said. “You’re so close to the edge, you look like you might fall off.”
It’s hard to break old habits. Eventually, though, I claimed my share of our glorious bed, and there was still room to spare. We agreed it was the best gift ever, and after that, sleeping was easy.
When we moved to the Michigan cottage, the tiny stairway with its low ceiling nearly eliminated our bed entirely but the movers finally made it work. Then when we learned about Nate’s cancer, we determined to stay in our beloved bed as long as possible. Stairs, however, quickly became a risk for him, and wisdom dictated bringing in a hospital bed on the main floor.
His last 17 nights he slept in that second choice bed, but as with each of his losses, Nate didn’t complain. He acknowledged the benefits of an undulating mattress to help his skin, rails to keep him secure and the absence of steps in his routine. He never once said, “I wish I was in our big bed upstairs.”
I wish I was as mature as he was in accepting what cannot be changed about life. He accepted the misery of his last weeks as what God had willed for him and never asked why. Although Nate sometimes fought the circumstances of his life, it’s interesting that when faced with the worst possible scenario, that of life and death, he surrendered. He’d met a challenge he couldn’t conquer, and he recognized it. I believe it goes against men to be dependent, but Nate accepted having to become more and more dependent on those around him. Ultimately he accepted dependence on God alone.
This morning I didn’t change the sheets after all. I just flipped them. Nate’s side is now on mine, and my side is on his.
”I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:13,19)
