The Last Day

 Sunday, December 27, 2020

It's close to midnight, New Years Eve, 2024 as I remember the actual day he took his last natural breath, while looking into my eyes, and slowly closed his own and was gone. His death certificate says December 31, 2020, but I firmly believe his soul was gone and only modern medicine kept him breathing for four more days as we prayed for a miracle.

Except for a two week trip to Virginia a few days before Thanksgiving, we'd been settling into our dreamed about second home in Arkansas since June. Three days before that fateful Sunday, we'd celebrated Christmas with all the Arkansas family at our home for the first time since 1989. He'd decorated the outside of our home with lights around the front, and while he was on the roof I said "be careful", and to him I'm sure it sounded as though I warned him a hundred times, due to my fear of heights, not his.. 

Our original plan was to spend three months in Arkansas and three months in Virginia, but we'd stayed in Arkansas longer to help with his mom Eva who suffered a stroke and could no longer live alone. If she wasn't in the hospital or rehab we would take turns with his sisters a week at a time to help care for her. We've always tried to be present at every event in our family and staying to help due to health issues was one of the most important..

He retired in the summer of 2019 and the months leading up to this Sunday were such life changing events that I feel we never fully embraced retirement. Selling our home where we lived for 27 years, moving to the country and building out a small house across the driveway from Buddy and Kerri, buying new construction in Arkansas and living through the months of Covid were just a few of the major changes. 

So many times over the past four years I think about how fortunate we are not to know the future. We wake up each morning with plans and really don't ever consider that before the day is done we might encounter something so traumatic that it will change life as we know it and we are left with broken dreams and broken hearts. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. Proverbs 16:9

That Sunday morning I was the one who didn't feel well. He suggested we stay home from church, but I said no, we needed to go. We went to church and then to a quick lunch at the farm. Our "plan" was to pack for spending the coming week with his mom. I remember lying on the couch and reading a book, but I can't remember what he was doing. My next memory is watching him leave me and then the trauma and hysteria that followed.

God was there, through every hour I felt his presence. During those four days I was surrounded by our children, they held me up and stood by him on one side as I stood on the other. I prayed for healing, for God to restore him to me whole and healthy. But as the days went on and he never opened his eyes I began to pray differently.  I knew my strong, athletic military husband and we had many conversations about life and death. I knew the time was coming that the ventilator would need to go, so I asked my Heavenly Father to take him home and not leave him here in a way he would not want. God granted my request.

I miss him every single day. And I thank God every day for the beautiful years we shared. 

Grief is a journey, a hard, painful journey, but one we must travel to be able to live out the life we've been given until it is our time to join those who have gone before us. Naming my blessings and being thankful has carried me through these past fourteen hundred and sixty four days.