Realization

     Nothing will hush unsettling talk like riding to the deathbed of a friend.  We got the call this afternoon.  Mike's good friend from "the mountains" was diagnosed with cancer of the gallbladder many months ago.  He was "cured" and was his cheerful, hard working self when Mike showed up 3 months ago for a surprise visit.  I don't need to tell you that it returned.  We don't know all the details.  Mike has been working desperately hard to stay afloat and was helping, easing the 2 little ones into our way of life.  He regrets not understanding how fast Mark had gone downhill.  So, we rode.  He didn't care for what was playing, so it ended up on Christian radio, which is a rarity with "menfolk" in the car.  Better songs couldn't"ve" played.                                                                                                                                                  
     The nurses even looked distraught when we got to his house, hospice nurses I guess.  One named Linda looked like she was about to cry.  My thoughts went straight to my good, good friend, Mary-Hope, who does this very kind of work and her heart is just as in it.  We sat in the company of other old acquaintances while waiting for a turn to visit the bedroom.  So very many of our neighbors still don't know why we "up and left" almost 3 years ago.  It's a story I will soon tell here, but tonight I gave them the chilling details of Mike's ordeal, survival, and our inevitable move.  One was a nurse and they ALWAYS have the same look when I tell them what happened.  Funny thing tonight is that she was married to one of the twins sitting there and never let on to whether it was the one she was sitting rather close to or the one standing.  I would never have had any humor in our conversation if I'd understood what I was about to see.                          
    When we were summoned back, stepping into the room was like visiting what I've seen in concentration camp photos.  He was of slight build to begin with, but there was nothing left of him, his joking smile erased.  A "Do Not Resuscitate" notice was on  their dresser. I spanned the room looking at their family pictures, the black and white picture of him as a boy, his friendly and petite daughters.  His wife quickly came to Mike and took him bedside to say, "Look who's here!  Trouble!"  His eyes had just lifted a few moments before and he knew just who Mike was.  He and his father, Jack, own a towing and repair shop in Boone.  He has hauled virtually every vehicle we've ever had out of some perilous place, our Jeep wedged  between  trees on mountainous property and our 3 hour old flipped convertible Mustang out of a creek.  He worked on Mike's big truck, allowing him to learn and help, and even park his truck there when he came home.     
     There was the 3 year old grandson, Sawyer, born a couple of weeks before Madalynn.  As a matter of fact, he has our wooden play fort and swing set that Mike was too unwell to disassemble and reassemble.  I tried to talk with him about it since his mother wanted him distracted when death became imminent while we were there.  This I could help with.  Before, his sweet mother was taking him in for brief visits to see his "Pop Mark" with her 9 week old in the other room.  Being in her shoes - birth and death within this short span of time - is unenviable at best.                                                                                                                  
     What came to mind, in waiting a few more minutes to speak with his wife before we left, was the grief on her face, letting go of this "young" husband, 50 years old.  My conscience rushed me back to the day of Mike's emergency aortic bypass at Baptist.  Later, my story will divulge why a kidney stone had anything at all to do with it, but this evening all that matters is that I convey how treacherously close I was to being a widow myself.  He had been medicated for half a year with morphine because of a lodged stone which we found out later was 8 mm in size.  It was a time when we had another lapse of insurance and he was trying to "wait it out", having had over 40 stones prior.  The problem with living with medicated people is you don't know when the true need is there and when an addiction is arising.  He has very high tolerances to begin with, so more and more was required.  The lines became blurred; I was very pregnant with Madalynn; and our marriage was once again a wreck.  When everything finally came to fruition, Madalynn was 5 weeks old and the father of my seven children was being cut open from chest to groin in surgery akin to the danger of brain surgery, the aorta lying parallel with the spinal column.                                                   
     This will appall some, but I'll run the risk to tell the truth.  I entertained the thought that this could be destined end to the turmoil for the children and me.  I quickly realized that my "delirium" must've been caused by being worn out and living in that alien reality, feeling like I was watching my own life play out without me, without any firm thing to grasp.  The only child that was in the hospital for the surgery was tiny Madalynn.  She slept all 9 hours of the surgery against my chest, as if God had put His hand on her.  I walked out onto the outdoor part of the floor, near the helicopter pad he was flown in on,  and I cried out to Jesus.  I imagined the agony of the children at his funeral.  Finality, which I have been spared the experience of so often, was not something I could embrace and in a vow I too often "forget", I told my Saving Grace that if the children could keep their father, I would endure the rest.  Cold you think?  You haven't walked in my shoes.  To see the pain in that woman's face tonight showed me what taste I was kept from.  To see their daughters' graciousness, holding back outbursts in thanks for every small thing, and maturity, early in their 20's, pulled at me viciously.  I've read that we don't know what we're truly setting out for in this world when we wish to be alone, no matter how bad the circumstances may seem presently.                                    
     Where does all this put me? - a husband in tears holding my hand on the way home, confiding in me that without his friend's help and patience for payment, we would've hardly made it several times.  Once inside, it put me in a hug from him where I still fit perfectly under his arm and, somehow no matter what, still feel safe there.