Category Archives: Saying Goodbye

One Year Ago: The Last 24 Hours

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I look back at last year’s calendar with its description of our final day with Nate and shake my head. It was a dreadful yet holy day, a family time set apart like no other. What stands out in my memory?

  • First and foremost, Nate, struggling with pain but then responding well to the morphine drops, liquid relief from the agony of failing organs.
  • Hospice nurses, three in particular: Margarita teaching us how to use atropine to lessen the fluids in Nate’s system; Sonia showing us how to swab his mouth, moisten his lips, cool him with wet cloths and speak soothingly; Dee, spending the night on a stool near Nate, then tenderly bathing him on his last morning.
  • Singing, praying, reading Scripture.
  • Nate finally resting without pain, no knitted brow, no agitation, a relaxed hand as I held it.
  • Family love and gratitude expressed through tearful goodbyes.
  • The Holy Spirit’s presence with us in our dimly lit sanctuary, with Nate in his hospital bed as the centerpiece.
  • Nurse Dee’s comment, “During the night, he looked like he was getting younger and younger.”
  • Nate’s passion to hang on as long as he could, not leaving us until there was no other choice.
  • God and Nate deciding his life had reached its finish line and Nate’s walking into eternity with the Lord.
  • Our aching hearts struggling to believe what had happened, crying, praying, loving.
  • Watching a new nurse officially declare he was gone, released from his earthly body-bondage; listening to her words of comfort as she shared her Christian faith with me.
  • Disposing of Nate’s many drugs with Hospice, grateful he had no further need for them.
  • Watching the funeral home director and his assistant carry Nate out our front door, but being sure the real Nate had left two hours before that.
  • Realizing God had dramatically healed Nate of a very bad back and pancreatic cancer!

Although I’ve thought about these same details a million times during the last 12 months, tonight, for a change, I’m not crying. And I can’t explain it.

Tomorrow might be a different story, but for now, I can walk among the memories and be drawn to the blessings. During this year, God the Father has taught me so much about leaning on him that I’m continually aware of his nearness and can honestly say he’s my most precious Friend.

Today Louisa shared her thoughts about missing her papa, and we agreed there would be many future days when we’ll wish he was with us. Nothing, however, can spoil the unending togetherness we’ll have in eternity. The disconnect is only temporary.

Most likely we’ll never get the answer to her important question, “Why did he have to die when he did?” Instead, through his death, we’ve been given an opportunity to deepen our relationship with God. He had a reason for taking Nate when he did, a good one, and we can choose to trust him on that. Then, as trust increases, we’ll wonder “why” less and less.

In the mean time, we can freely look back, counting on God’s comfort to help us well into the future.

”Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

One Year Ago: A photo speaks.

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A picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words. I’ve been drawn back to the photographs from the days when Nate was sick, and the one I’ve posted here has disturbed me greatly. I’ve been tempted to delete it. But after a loved one has died and additional pictures are impossible, deleting in not easy.

Today I studied this frame for a long time, trying to define what disturbs me so. What would a stranger say about it? Would it be equally upsetting to someone who didn’t know us?

Two of the thousand words it would speak to anybody are, “Deathly ill.”

It also shows that this crisis is unfolding in a home where others are healthy, which might be what is so unsettling. Placing healthy so close to terminally ill might be the classic definition of life-is-unfair.

All of us come into life with a definition of fair and unfair, and we bristle at the picture of one person being singled out of many to suffer intensely. There were 13 of us living together at the time this photo was taken, and I don’t recall who had the camera. I only saw the picture for the first time many weeks after Nate had died. But I do remember that as the photo was being taken, I felt warmth and joy in holding onto a vibrant one year old, especially so because a life-and-death war was raging right behind me. So several more of the thousand words this picture could speak would be, “Death is taking, but life is still giving.”

Nate’s face is turned slightly toward Skylar and me. Although none of us saw him move voluntarily during these last days, and although he was sleeping deeply, no matter how we moved him, bathed him or adjusted his pillow, when we looked again, he was turned toward my “station” at the head of his bed.

So I choose to hear the picture say, “Nate is aware of you nearby and comforted by that.” I also hear, “The wait is almost over,” which applies most importantly to his.

There’s something else the photograph says. Because three of us are in the picture, it means ten family members are busy elsewhere. Although Nate didn’t beat his disease, cancer didn’t take the rest of us down, too, which is a credit to the Lord. The devil is all about disease and death, but Jesus always has the final say.

This picture was taken two days before Nate slipped away from the bondage of pain-ridden illness and entered a hale-and-hearty freedom the likes of which no photograph can describe. Although Skylar and I have continued to enjoy earthly health, Nate blew past us, achieving fitness and well-being beyond our understanding. And because of that, there’s one more word the picture says:

TRIUMPH!

“You have delivered me from all my troubles, and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.” (Psalm 54:7)

One Year Ago: Nate’s Fear

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Last year on this date, Nate spoke the words, “I’m afraid.”

We didn’t realize he was only four days from his death, although all of us knew the cancer would claim his life in the not-too-distant future. Nate knew it, too, but he was still walking, talking and clinging to the semblance of a routine at our house. Forty-eight hours from that day he would climb into bed for the last time, but none of us thought we were that close.

My calendar says Nate took his daily walk down our quiet lane that day along with several of us and his cane, but none of us knew it would be his last outing. By the following day he could no longer support himself on his weakened legs without a son on each side, although he kept trying, cause for great concern among the rest if us.

It was late afternoon when Nate whispered to me in a raspy voice that he was afraid. He said it twice. I thought the reality of death approaching was what had put fear in his heart, but he said no, it was fear of the pain. He’d been in severe pain for so long, particularly those last few days, that he knew he couldn’t handle an increase.

At that point we both realized he needed better pain meds. Hospice nurses responded with morphine, and Nate’s body responded with relief. It was a relief for all of us. Earlier in the day, Nelson had told his father, “You know I’d do anything for you, Papa.” We all felt that way. The sad truth was we were out of options. Radiation had done what it could, and chemo wasn’t even on the table. A team of learned doctors had concluded their treatment, and Nate’s life would soon end. The only task left was to manage what seemed like pain run rampant, and the Hospice nurses said they would do that.

Death will come to 100% of us, and it will most likely be preceded by pain. We may not all suffer from cancer and may have less or more than 42 days of warning, but in the end, we’ll all die a physical death. Many of us worry about what that might be: an accident? a disease? an infection? These are question marks without answers until we get there.

Nate needn’t have worried. He had one more difficult day, after which the morphine overwhelmed his pain completely and brought peaceful sleep. But what about the rest of us? Our question marks remain, a test for how thoroughly we can trust God to set it up just right for us.

For now, though,  it’s better that we not know.

“God shall wipe away all tears….  and there shall be no more…. pain.” (Revelation 21:4)