FOREVER AUTUMN

We started our life together on the cusp of the dawning Autumn.

The Autumn of 1974 was full of love and promise.

 

Bob liked the Moody Blues; his favorite song by this band was, ‘Nights in White Satin’ - but, I think this song sums up our life from start to finish.

Bob started leaving me; and our life together, the Autumn of 2018.

I am trying real hard to enjoy this season again – Fall used to be my favorite time of year.

I always liked Fall.

I could breathe in the Fall; my asthmatic lungs do not have to work so hard to overcompensate for the searing summer heat – in the crisp, chill air of Fall, I could breathe deeply and easily.

Bob & I married August 27^th, 1974 … and our daughter had been conceived before the week was out – our life together, and our family began in Autumn
(https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2019/08/when-we-married-in-1974.html).

It was the Autumn of 2018 that Bob started slipping away from me: our life was slowly coasting to a halt
(https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2018/09/fall-cleanup-and-forgiveness.html).

This day, last year; around noon, Bob’s struggling body couldn’t even tolerate the liquefied food stuffs the hospital was pumping into him through the feeding tube – it was removed:

He had vomited all night long and had had 6 liters of bile fluids drained from his stomach in the morning, in hopes the discomfort and nausea would abate ...

 

I went into the hospital hallway and cried. His body NEEDED to be able to keep nutritional foods down, and not vomit it back up.

Edema was severely swelling him from his toes to his chest, despite the massaging leg cuffs:

His hands and arms were beginning to swell too. It seemed to me to be a cruel irony because he had lost 60 pounds since September. He had no muscle tone at all because he had been laying abed for so long. Because he was also severely malnourished and so hepped up on potent narcotics to alleviate the pancreatic pain, he could barely stand to do the physical therapy the physicians insisted he attempt.

It was breaking my heart to watch that insidious illness try to break my gentle giant.

And yet, through it all, Bob continued to affirm his deep and abiding trust in Elohei; and clung to Yeshua’s healing atonement at Calvary. While I stuffed my mouth with my fist and cried in the hallway, where my husband could not hear me – I remember thinking that though we knew that Faith is the substance of things hoped for and not yet seen, it would be nice to SEE faith happening in the here and now. That affliction was horrible to experience – and to watch Bob experience: truthfully, ‘horrible’ is so inadequate a word to try to describe this thing that held us in its grip. If it were not for our absolute faith in Elohim, and knowing that HE had it all in hand …

It was hard not to get discouraged.

We needed a miracle.

The physicians parading in and out of Bob’s hospital room all said that pancreatitis is an illness that cannot be cured; and rebounding from it is a long, drawn-out process to bring it under control. Not a single physician had a clue as to WHY Bob had been struck with it. They kept mentioning gall-stones, but there was no evidence of gall-stone activity. There was evidence of poly cysts on his pancreas; those would need to be drained, but first they had to “rind over”.

The doctors here all knew they were in over their heads with Bob’s situation – they said as much. Several times. But there was not yet a bed free at OHSU; there were, however, many phone consultations between our local hospital here and OHSU, in Oregon, as to how to proceed forward until Bob could get to OHSU.

Meanwhile, Bob continued to show a rallying example of faithful fortitude – he never, not even for a second, doubted Elohim or broke faith with Yeshua. Bob was always upbeat – even when physically drained from the violent vomiting. He continued to tell everyone who came into his room about his salvation experience in 1981 – when Elohim brought him back from his second death which was 25 minutes long before he resurrected on the gurney headed to the morgue. He told them also that he was ready to go Home, if that was what Elohim had in mind this time around.

Watching my husband, and listening to him, I was feeling a mixture of powerful emotions: I was thankful that Yeshua was helping us to be upbeat despite sorrow being our constant companion; I was proud that Bob was refusing to allow death to beat him down – I was even a little proud of myself that I could stand with my husband; strong for him, with him. Yes, I cried. But I never fell apart. Elohim was faithful – He held us up and steeled us to face what we were facing with absolute Faith.

The Grim Reaper forced himself into our lives and dug in. Grief, death’s constant companion also planted itself in our life; we had to learn how to live with it. It wasn’t going anywhere: it had unpacked and was hunkered in for the duration.

I think back on that time and marvel that Bob was able to face his own death with such a strong resolve. That I was able to let go without hysteria – that I am able to function coherently now.

THAT IS THE MIRACLE that eluded us September thru December 2018. The miracle in Bob's life, during that horrific time, was that he could face his death without being gripped by fear. The miracle in my life is that I could face death with my husband without losing it to trauma drama ... and I am able to get on with life when I wasn't sure I could without Bob.

11 months/5 days/6 hours & 30 minutes.

And I am able to stand without being supported by Jack Daniels and the Marlboro Man: didn’t even need to call on them. I had thought that I might fall back on old habits ... and I even shared that fear with others ... but, thanks to the faithful love of Elohim and the saving grace of Yeshua, that never happened. I never even felt the urge to reacquaint myself with those numbing agents of Grief.

THAT’S FAITH in action.

We always trusted Elohim 100% with our life – individual or joined – and while The Grim Reaper crashed our party, and Grief wrote the concerto we were forced to dance to … Yeshua was always the Master. And HE covered us with His wings and sang over us. For every unknown & uncertain faltering dance steps we were stumbling with – HE came alongside us and taught us how to make the discomforting tune our own, and how to bend the orchestrated steps into our own unique masterpiece. We may have been dealing with an unruly party-crasher and a troublesome sidekick, but Elohim was always in control of the situation, and Yeshua turned disastrous circumstances into something uniquely beautiful: rather than highlighting the unimaginable suffering and jaw clenching pain (the reason for the potent narcotics being pumped into him) Bob’s impending death became beauty in action as death was pushed to the back and the glory of Elohei was brought to the forefront. I remember the afternoon Bob looked at me, with a cool damp washcloth draped over his fevered bald head to help stave off nausea, and said, “There are so many people coming in and out of this room Val; maybe I’m going through this because someone needs to hear my testimony and know that Yeshua loves them.” In that moment, I KNEW that Bob had made peace with his approaching death.

And I determined to do the same.

What is death?

What is life?

They are both only a breath in time; gone in the blink of an eye.

Either can be as hard … or as easy ... as we choose to make them.

Bob had come to terms with his impending death, and made peace with it: he was allowing Elohim to use him as a tool to reach someone’s heart with the message of Yeshua’s great love, and salvation.

From then on, I determined only to make this passage from one life to the next, as easy for my husband as I possibly could.

I started spending all day and all night in his room: I was there ‘round the clock, leaving him only when there were examinations to be done – I didn’t want the attendants to be tripping over me, and they always appreciated that thoughtfulness – and came to get me from the lounge when they were finished. Despite the physician’s pep talks, the attending nurses knew we were dealing with dwindling time together: they went out of their way to ease that concept for us. It was thoughtful. It was compassionate. I was thankful.

The Specter of Death was merciless in its dramatic appearance in our lives. Grief was a hard task master, driving us with its unwelcome dance lessons. Balancing time with Grief while trying to outpace Death’s demands became emotionally, physically, and spiritually draining. We were caught up in a morose waltz that suddenly had us twirling in a dizzying cadence – the dance steps were tricky and we found ourselves lightheaded with the frenzied activity. We had always enjoyed dancing … but, that November: not so much.

This time, last year was very challenging.

As long as I live, I will never forget the harsh Fall & ensuing separating Winter of 2018.

August 28^th, 2018, Bob & I were busy living our life, planning future activities of enjoyment. If death had been stalking us, we weren’t aware of the Reaper’s unwanted attentions. Grief never even gave a whispered hint. August 29^th, around noon, Bob had finished crafting the last garden box he would ever make me this side of Heaven; and we had, together, placed it in line along the borderline with the other 12 boxes that would give me a full-sized-garden gardening area. Mid-afternoon, ron cook placed a call to candy scott … and candy showed up on our front porch where Bob was taking a break, sitting on the carved Coho Bench. She started screaming that the boxes had not been approved by her, and she was waving highlighted papers at him, shouting that the rain barrels were illegal because they did not have lids on them, and had not been ‘professionally installed’ ... and ron was freaked out thinking apples and tomatoes would fall on his landscaping rock. Bob called for me to come out on the porch. I assessed the situation – saw that Bob was physically shaken due to the overload of stress candy had just dumped on him after a physically taxing day – and I asked her what was going on. She then started screaming at me, and I held up my hand, saying, “You need to stop screaming; you are upsetting my husband, and he can’t be stressed like this. First off … the garden boxes were already approved by the previous Manager – we made sure of that before we bought this house: we don’t need your approval: they are already ‘approved’; secondly, the rain barrels have lids – if you will shut up long enough to look down the side of the house, you can clearly SEE the lids on them.” She refused to acknowledge the previous approval, and she would not turn her head to look down the side of the house to see that rain barrels did indeed have lids on them – she continued to wave those stupid papers and screech like a demented chimp with shit in its hand. I finally told her she would have to leave, and that if she came back, I would sic a lawyer on her. She left – we came into the house. Bob went to lay down and calm down. August 30^th, Bob woke up and said he didn’t feel good – and he staggered down the hallway, where he promptly threw up in the toilet. I insisted he go to ER; he argued: we went. The 14th garden box never got built ...

By 1:30 PM, August 30th, 2018, we were reeling with the news that he was dying.

I remember staring dumbly at the ER talking head and thinking, “Is this real?” I opened my mouth, and asked, “Why? How? He hasn’t been sick! We just got back from a mini vaca around the Olympic Peninsula – he was fine! What the hell?”

Stress-induced pancreatitis.

That affliction careened out of control with the recent front-porch drama.

My thoughts then towards ron and candy were not good ones – they definitely were not even Christian ones …

Later that afternoon, August 30^th, 2018, when Bob was shifted from an ER cubicle to an ICU room upstairs, Bob was indeed dying. Right in front of me. And he did not want to be drugged out of his mind (literally – he was having hallucinations due to the drugs they filled his body with), he did not want to be hooked up to all that machinery. He did not want to be there at all – he wanted to die at home. Looking at my husband, I regretted forcing him to go to ER. I remembered our death discussions spanning 3 decades, and I made an executive decision: I would honor my husband’s wishes to die the way he chose. I told the physician standing at my elbow, “He does not want any of this. Take it all off him and do not give him any more drugs.” The physician argued – I was insistent; everything was removed and drugs were halted. I said, “If he makes it to tomorrow and decides he does want the machines and the drugs after all, then start it all up again. But for now, right now tonight … no more.” And that is what happened. Bob came through the night and decided that he still wanted the DNR in effect, but he would agree to treatment as long as it did not involve actual resuscitation steps.

And that decision, Bob made, is what led to last year’s November 19^th, ordeal. That I am remembering on today’s 1-year Memory Anniversary.

The Grim Reaper was not willing to negotiate: he collected in December 2018
(https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2018/12/inconviences.html).

And his imp, Grief, makes sure I never forget.

But neither of those two hellish minions expected us to cleave to Faith’s assurances like we did/do.

While Grief has been my constant companion these past 11 months/5 days/6 hours & 30 minutes, it is losing its death-grip on me – I am learning, with the faithfulness of Elohim’s compassion and Yeshua’s ‘peace that passes all understanding’ how to shake the debilitating effects of grief off. I am in the process of healing – and every day I get a little stronger Grief gets a little weaker: pretty soon, due to lack of attention, Grief won’t be so forceful or demanding. Grief will always be lurking in the shadows, but it won’t be able to paralyze me like it did those first empty heartbreaking months.

This time, last year, I boldly fought against Grief. I had to – Bob depended on me to be strong; to help him face Death boldly, confidently: as a united front, as we had always faced challenging situations and circumstances since joining our lives together 44 years ago. I was wise enough to understand that Grief would always be in my life from here on out … and Bob wouldn’t. I could deal with Grief later: I needed to be in the moment with my husband; this time, last year.

So, I packed a duffel bag with a novel, a knitting project, some juices, and the ipad; and started camping in Bob’s hospital room where we could look at each other all day and all night long; we could talk without watching the clock; we could hold hands; we could kiss; I stroked his bald head; I could feast my eyes on him while he slept – and his eyes would see me as soon as he woke up.

We were together.

Yet, we were separating.

It was challenging.

My thoughts were filled with Autumn memories this time, last year: Bob was born on the cusp of Autumn 1949; I first laid eyes on Bob’s face in the Autumn of 1966; we married on the cusp of Autumn of 1974; our ‘honeymoon-baby’ pregnancy was confirmed the Autumn of 1974; our granddaughter was born the Autumn of 1995; we moved back to our local area the Autumn of 1995; Bob retired the cusp of Autumn 2011.

Bob started slipping away from me the Autumn of 2018.

And life would never be the same for us again.

My life seems to have revolved around Autumn.

All of my life will now always be ‘Forever Autumn’.