It’s March 10, 2025, the third anniversary of my husband’s death. I’m feeling a little sad, but life goes on though good men die, as Edna St Milay wrote in her poem “Lament.” I think I’ve adapted quite well, thanks to the help of my children, especially my daughter, who lives just 15 minutes away. And then there is my beloved church family. I often feel a bit guilty leaning on my daughter as much as I do, but it is so comforting to have someone who can fix my computer, help with financial matters, do jobs around the house, drive me to the doctor, etc. Looking around me at others my age who are struggling to make it on their own, I am constantly reminded of just how fortunate I am. And then there is the way he carefully planned for our future, no matter which of us went first. I am so grateful.
I don’t like remembering the day he died as he clung to life with all the energy he possessed. He’d take deep gulping gasps that seemed to rent the very air the rest of us breathed. And it went on and on, hour after hour. We did all we knew how to do to make him comfortable, to let him know it was OK for him to let go. We prayed with him, gave him permission, and our daughter-in-law sang to him… I was in another room when he took his last breath, but our daughter and granddaughter were. Listening to his gasping for breath was difficult, but the silence was deafening.
Tonight, the extended family in various parts of the country will eat ice cream in honor of this very special man who did so much to shape all of our lives. He did love his ice cream! Grieving took time, but in its wake is the knowledge that I have been much blessed to have had him as my life partner. He wasn’t always easy to live with, but then neither was I. He was, as our eldest often described him, a crusty marshmallow. Crusty on the outside but complete moosh on the inside.
Remembering him on this anniversary of his death, I am once again reminded of the story our Catholic Sister friend told of him working the cash register at our Ten Thousand Villages Fair Trade Sales. She’d give him money to pay for the things she’d chosen, and he’d give her back her change, the same amount she gave him but in different denominations. When she’d scold him, saying, “But that’s not the right change,” he’d look at her with his quirky half smile and say, “Sometimes I count with my head, and sometimes I count with my heart.” And that was who he was, a quiet, shy, introverted man who lived life richly despite terrible physical disabilities because somewhere along the way, he learned to sometimes live life with his head and sometimes with his heart.