Your Dying Spouse 535 - Staying Calm

Oh my Gawd, I'm going to die!

I always wondered how I would react to a terminal illness, to the knowing that my ays were numbered, and that they were gong to get nasty before it all ended.

I wondered if I would be like a rat in a fatal maze, running desperately for an exit, clawing at the walls.

Now I know. Thanks to cancer's gut-punch, now I know.

And I'm OK. I'm not running around like Chicken Little.

The sky's not falling, because I have today.

As things got horrible, my view pulled back from both the future and the past. I don't really have a future, except for the ordinary cycle of days. There are no 'big ideas' that will come to fruition, not now.

And the past is, well, past. I screwed up a lot. But I can't fix that; I can't redeem myself in my eyes, or in the eyes of others.

There is an unexpected grace in this, a liberation from both ambition and regret.

The tomorrows for which I planned, and which I will not see, I hand over to God; perhaps He will make them right, and they will be awaiting me in Heaven.

The yesterdays I would have mourned are likewise given over, and He will hold them as far as the East is from the West.

An I have today, with pain and nausea and incontinence, but it's my today.

So I think I'll watch Dwayne Johnson in Skyscraper, one of the best all-time family action films.

It's a good day.

Music from The Traveling Wilburys, with The End Of The Line.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 534 - Beast Of Burden

One of the worst things about dying...apart from the fact that you're, y'know, dying...is that you become a burden on others.

It's worst, of course on Barbara. She can't do the things she would like to do, like travel, and has to do things she would prefer not to do...like remain still if I doze off while we're watching a DVD. Sleep comes hard, and she has to protect hat I can get.

There's more; if I do too much to try to be a help to her, I can wear myself out and cause pain spikes that put a huge demand on her, physically and mentally.

And if I do too little, I shift more work on to her shoulders.

Her shoulders are compromised, because she was in a car wreck several years ago.

So I'm still the upper-body muscle here. I have to keep it up, but if I work too hard at it, bingo, I'm screaming through the night with pain.

Too little, and I can't do the job.

So I'm a beast of burden, on a tightrope.

Falling sucks, for everyone.

The Beatles' When I'm 64 seems like an appropriate musical selection.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 533 - The Meaning Of It All

The pain demons came for me in the small hours, this morning.

Crushing pain in the chest and abdomen, breathing in shallow gaps, riding the tsunamis of spasms that wracked and wrecked my pancreas and lymph nodes.

It got too hard to cough, and breath started to leave.

I thought about calling Barbara from her room, sending Ladron the Chief Service Dog to get her, but what could she do? And she had to go to work in the morning.

So I stayed with the demons, and took their cold-burning embrace.

They left a bit later, only to return with their friends as the sky began to lighten.

Seeing the monsters more clearly in the gathering dawn, they were even more frightening than they were when concealed by darkness. They wanted to torture me, and then kill me, and in their faces there was no mercy, nothing to which I could appeal.

And I'm OK.

I'm OK because my life has meaning.

I used to think that meaning was defined by what I do, praying for Barb and supporting her in her work, taking care of the dogs, witnessing to the power of hope and faith and love in this blog.

But it's all of these things...and none of them.

The purpose I saw sprang from joy, a joy that endured the pain and the degradation of things like incontinence and puking that won't stop, and the loss of everything I trained to do.

Joy is my purpose.

For didn't a Jewish carpenter say, a while back, that He came so that we could have joy, and that our joy would be full?

He didn't put preconditions on it. He didn't say, "Yeah, well, believe in Me and I'll see that things go well, and you'll be happy about that."

I mean, after all, look at how Life On Earth worked out for Him. Whipped half to death, nailed to a cross, and all that. Bummer of a way to spend a Friday, dude.

He just said that in Him, we'd find joy. Period, full stop.

Jesus is joy.

And that is the meaning of the whole thing.

Music from Van Halen (with the great avid Lee Roth), with Jump.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 532 - I've Got A Secret

Psst.

Got something for you. A secret. Lean in.

Closer.

You want to know the secret of dealing with cancer, and all the other curveballs life sends your way?

It's this, from Johnson Beharry, the Greadian hero of the British Army, who won a VC at Al-Amarrah.

Sometime you da windshield, and sometime you da bug.

Good things happen, and bad things happen. There's no need to wonder why; God's ways aren't our ways, and we can't see His big picture.

We just deal with it, with His help. He stands waiting; all we have to do is ask.

I highly recommend Beharry's autobiography, Barefoot Soldier. It's the story of a good and courageous man.

Music from Kenny Loggins, with This Is It.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 531 - Brutal Truths

Doin' bad, and doin' worse,
but I'm not a flutterin' flighty,
'cause I know there ain't a curse
that can stand agin' the Almighty.

Hope y'all don't mind a recycled blog comment from today's Mundane Faithfulness, a touching piece that Kara Tippetts wrote while in hospice care, called Tears In My Life Cereal.

"There are no tears here, as I am dying, and even as my wife noticed a real "Oh, CRAP" development in me last night. When she pointed it out, in an unsteady voice, my response was, "Whoa!. That SUCKS." "

"It's not a good thing, this hardass flippancy...well, it's good for me, but it's a real bummer for those around me; in a sense, it undermines their basis for compassion..."If HE doesn't really care, why should I?"

"So I think there are maybe special responsibilities incumbent upon the dying, to walk a line between neediness and emotional breakdown, and the kind of hardness that excludes humanity. We have to think of the burdens we place on others, or the things we may be taking FROM them that are theirs to carry.

"And we have to think about legacy; I won't be here for the days when Barbara will be wishing she could have somehow reached what she perceives to be the scared child within me, and offer the comfort that only a spouse can.

"I don't know how to do this, and if anyone would care to make suggestions, I would be grateful."

Some fun music from the all-girl alt-rock band Lillix, with It's About Time. Feels oddly appropriate.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I do my best, and your comments are really precious to me. Barb is answering many of them now. I'm running on fumes, if you don't mind a macho metaphor.

I'm grateful for the energy to have written this. I'm so glad Barbara's stepped in for many of my posts. I'm really not doing well at all.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.