Daily

Why would the Lord have my love die during Easter week?

Very early in the morning, on a Holy Tuesday, Duwayne flatlined. I asked his best friend to sing Great is Thy Faithfulness with me. He did. I wept on Duwayne’s neck and then sat down to write—poems. He always, always pulled through his hospital stays, despite prognosis, and went back to work. That was our cycle. Not this time. In six days he was gone.

The night he went to the hospital he was restless in bed. Bedroom lights were on late into the night and his brother and I (belly full with Amelia) worked to turn him and sit him up and adjust pillows and nothing helped. He couldn’t breathe. I argued with the ER doctor who showed me x-rays as if I was unfamiliar with how utterly gutted he was in every way. He wanted to show me his suffering so that I would authorize a DNR. The paramedics didn’t tell me he crashed in the ambulance when they came for him. I rode in the front along an all too familiar journey. Still, this doctor had no idea who my husband was, what he fought through or what he wanted. I’m still working on forgiving him. I thank God for my dear friend, also a doctor and Duwayne’s friend before he was mine, who came with diplomacy and gentleness. He looked me in my eyes to explain where we were and asked me the hard questions like what to do with his body if he died. I think of his and others’ grief…the restlessness his death causes even now.

Duwayne’s face glowed on that hospital bed. His skin was beautiful and swollen with fluids. I always loved his hands. They were perfect, even with chemo blackness on his knuckles. 

How could I allow Eva to see him like that? Fighting while looking at ease? Unable to speak, unable to drag the ventilator out as he always wanted to do with a nasogastric tube—choking with assistance he did not want to need?

As a mother, I question some of my choices, one of which is not allowing Eva to visit him as we always did when he was on the mend. Many tines, she would say she didn’t want to go see her daddy and I would coax her because he really needed to see her. And I knew she missed him dearly. I remember an interview I did with him expressing fear over not being alive for her fifth birthday, a fear which became a reality. On this and other occasions he would say, “If life spare…” and we’d giggle about it. Yes, yes. We found the possibility of his death truly funny at times, and the way he said it made us very tickled with happiness and fear. This time he was really caught in death’s grip and couldn’t wrestle himself away. I couldn’t let her see him like that and then never see him forever, so I let her play and sleep through those six days. I’m still not sure I made the right choice.

The question I began with will take a lifetime of answering for me. As I reflect today, I feel loved knowing that Duwayne went to rest on a day Jesus spoke about the kinds of people who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They were regular people who knew their need of forgiveness, and those who made choices to do the will of God, even if not at first.

My faith grew through the daily circumstances, movements, choices with and for Duwayne and my girls that attracted the grace and mercy of God as we needed it. And how I still need it, especially while writing today. When I ask the Father to give me my daily bread, I invite provision—sustenance—to keep and strengthen me though the full spectrum of seasons and cycles I’m in the midst of in any particular day. I experienced it then, over those nine years he was sick and during those six last days. And now, as my sister likes to point out, I have special widow grace that makes my Father say yes to anything my little heart desires. 

It’s true.

(Cover photo taken December, 2018 while pregnant with Amelia. Eva sang, “Happy Birthday” to Duwayne that night and he loved it. His birthday is in August BTW. Lol.)