October 12, 2018

Three months ago today Sandy went home to God.

Seems like yesterday. Yet feels like so long ago.

I find myself living somewhere between the past and the future. And I don’t yet know how to do this in-between thing. Some days I’m right back there on July 12th, struggling to come to grips with the fact she has left me. Other times I’m staring out at the future wondering how to carve out a new life without her.

We were married for 48 years.

Dated for 5 years before that.

Spent more than half our lives together.

Friends tell me to cherish the good memories. But most of what I remember these days is that last year of her suffering and the final several weeks of her dying. Symbols of that horrible time are still strewn about the house – her blue bathrobe draped over the rocking chair in our bedroom where the EMT’s tossed it when they took her to the hospital that last time, eyeglasses sitting in the middle of the dining room table surrounded by clinical reports and medical bills, half-empty bottles of the medicines I fed her to alleviate the incessant pain, and nearby the still-open notebook with times and dosages of the drugs taken.

Her dying is all around me.

And each memory feels like a punch in the pit of the stomach.

So I’ve made a decision.

Today, 3 months later, I’m going to close the book on that chapter of our life together.

Not the full story of Marty and Sandy.

Just the chapter on her death and dying.

Over the past weekend I traveled back to Massachusetts. The cemetery where she is inurned notified me that Sandy’s bronze memorial marker is finally installed. Pete and I drove out to see it. My name is inscribed too, of course, along with my birth year. 1949.

Noting there is not yet a death year for me, Pete and I joked about creating a pool so all our friends can bet on the over/under of what year I’ll check out. Graveyard humor, you know?

But we became somber viewing the inscription of Sandy’s name.

And the year of her birth – 1951.

And her death – 2018.

It struck me that this last date represented not just the year of Sandy’s passing, but perhaps even more importantly, it is the date her suffering ended.

This was a powerful insight for me.

It made me realize that I too must let the suffering end. And to do that, I have to put away the visible reminders that hold me captive to that last chapter of Sandy’s suffering and dying.

Back home, I’ve now picked up her blue bathrobe from the rocking chair and carefully placed it on a hanger in the walk-in closet. The medical bills and clinical reports are filed away and I’ve placed her eyeglasses in her nightstand drawer. The drugs are all gone now, carefully destroyed and discarded according to the instructions given by our Hospice nurse. The notebook with pages and pages listing medicine dosages and times administered is in the wastebasket.

I’m closing the chapter on Sandy’s dying.

Instead, I’m turning my memories toward the 48-plus years we shared together and all the goodness of the life with which God blessed us. Absent the visible reminders of the last chapter I am now able to more fully embrace the whole story of us.

And the memories are so good!

I’ve changed my Facebook status to “Widowed” because that word just seems to reflect the new reality of my life. I go into the future with the gift of Sandy still with me.

Cheering me on, I hope.