"In sickness...."

Mother & Daddy at Bobby & Louise's wedding---Dec. 1971



9/23/10 “In sickness” is just one phrase from most marriage vows but it is a BIG one to honor. I have seen it honored well these last several years. Personally I have experienced it as hubby nursed me through a year of cancer procedures and surgeries. Yet, with us, there was always a hope for a better tomorrow. Not so, for some folks----at least not physically. It’s those folks, honoring those vows, some taken long ago, who impress me. Sickness or debilitation can linger. There can be many days between onset and the end. Then, as the end approaches, time together becomes a sharing of the mechanics of dying.

As Mother was in her final chapter of life, I got a glimpse of 60th year wedding vows “fleshed out.” Sometimes I felt like Mother’s life “ride” was being steered toward the edge of a cliff. As she got closer and closer to the edge, I struggled. I didn’t want to let go of her. I had dreams---not being able to bear it, that soon she would ride in her earthly “life car” over that edge, fall off and crash into the abyss. In reality, I knew that she would really just enter into the Lord’s arms.

I went into denial. Brother Bobby stayed very much in the day-to- day happenings and tended to all her medical and financial affairs. Daddy, on the other hand, lived moment by moment with her in the midst of her sickness. They had moments. Hard moments of tending to bodily functions. Good moments of sharing a nap. I can still see them stretched out side-by-side on their old double bed---Mother under the covers, Daddy atop the covers, but holding hands.

The end is inevitable (for all of us) but as her end became more imminent, Daddy was the one who “did right by her.” He kept those vows and was there “in sickness” to help her entrance into heaven be as gentle as possible.

May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. (Proverbs 5:18)

Molly's wedding, 2001------7 months before her death