Tuesday, January 16, 2007

To my beloved, in care of God, wherever that might be:

It has been three weeks since you left me and I have constantly been trying to make sense of it.

Why did you have to spend the last thirty years of your life in suffering and pain?

You were a wonderful woman, full of compassion, and were constantly looking out for the elderly that you knew.

You contributed funds to various charities behind my back because you thought I might not approve.

You taught Sunday school and went to church every Sunday when you were still able.

You kept your Bible on the diningroom table so you could read it every day.

You, mainly on your own, raised three wonderful daughters who were able to stand on their own two feet.

How could God not have smiled on you?

I think I may have thought of a partial answer.

I don’t know the reason for your suffering but I do know that you proved your worth.

You withstood all that was tossed at you and managed to smile.

It gives new meaning to the book of Job in the Bible.

This brings me to the last day that you were home.

You had cancelled two doctor’s appointments because you did not want to leave the house.

You had been sleepy for a couple of days and spent much of your time in slumber.

I wanted to take you to the hospital but you’d smile and say, “I’m fine, I don’t want to go.”

On that last day our youngest daughter called to see how you were and you could not talk on the phone without falling asleep.

I decided to call an ambulance against your wishes.

Tragic mistake.

I should have known that God was calling you home.

You were smiling and peaceful and would have passed on in comfort after all the pain you’d been through.

As it was, all my religious teaching and my selfishness told me to save you.

The church says that prayer will heal, ask and you shall receive.

You had plenty of people praying for you along with the congregations of two or more churches.

As a result you had three more weeks of hell.

You had often said that you did not want to go through what your dad went through when he passed on.

But you went through much worse.

They had to cut new holes in your body to make room for the tubes they stuck in you.

Your mouth was a bloody mess where they forced a tube down your throat for a week longer than they should have before deciding to cut a hole in your throat for a different tube.

The original diagnosis was pneumonia, kidney failure, and congestive heart failure.

As a result you had multiple doctors.

A family doctor who was away at the time, who sent in a substitute who said she didn’t have your records.

You had a kidney doctor, who performed dialysis most every day,

You had a lung doctor for your pneumonia,

You had a cardiologist who complained that the other doctors weren’t doing enough to get the fluids from you body so he could treat you heart failure.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

The final diagnosis was internal bleeding, five pints worth, and unknown sepsis, no blood pressure and death.

If I had listened to God instead of my faulty beliefs, your passing would have been peaceful.

I knew you were leaving me and the pain you had suffered and would have been much better off with your God.

Even had you gotten better you would still have had to suffer the pain of living.

I’m so sorry,

Please forgive me.

______________________________________________

Thirty years of suffering.
1977 Broken back after falling off a ladder, helping an elderly neighbor wash her windows.
Two or three years in a brace with back pain that never ceased, eventual arthritis.
Compund fracture of the right arm after falling against a hearthstone. Improper setting by a quack with much of the loss of the right arm. Breast cancer with a full mastectomy of the right breast. Loss of her father from stroke and three years of suffering. Loss of mother under same conditions. Severe rheumatiod arthritis, loss of most of the use of hands and feet. Burst blood vessle in right eye causing total blindness in that eye. Unable to sleep in a bed, even an adjustable one. Last two or three years sleeping in a chair with me at her feet on the floor. Spent the last years of her life in a wheel chair that she could not move because she had little use of her hands.