The Best Part

They say there's a place where dreams have all gone
They never said where, but I think I know
Its miles through the night just over the dawn
On the road that will take me home

 " I talked to Dennis for about an hour last night," my daughter says, "and we both agreed that often, Dad was the voice of reason."

    I smile from the passenger seat of her red Civic. When the various illnesses that plagued my husband rose to the surface, he could be anything BUT reasonable, but this is something I shielded my children from for two decades. I wanted them to see their father for his heart.

"It wasn't so much that he would say anything, " Bonnie continues, "it was just that he was there. Listening to us. Solid. Big. Like he had all the time in the world just to listen." She sighs. "I'd walk  in the house and he'd say, 'There she is! There's my girl and her beautiful smile!' and it was like nothing else mattered. Everything would be okay. You know?"

I know. While I have not missed the various nursing duties or the back breaking labor that fell on my shoulders during Ron's last years, I have everyday missed his solid presence. I miss coming home from school each day and telling him about my high school students and their struggles to learn English, the interesting characters I see on my train ride, or the latest idea I have for a story.

"The boys and I realize," she says as she makes a right turn into the drive, "that he wasn't always that calm. That when we were there it was different than when it was just you. We know there was a lot of..." she searches for a word,"...disquiet."

And when I pass by, don't lead me astray don't try and stop me, don't stand in my way
I'm bound for the hills where the cool waters flow
On the road that will take me home

I nod as we drive up the gentle slope of Lawncroft Cemetery. The bells of the carillon--a sound my husband loved--are playing.  I think back to a conversation I had with my oldest son, Dennis, years ago when Ron was in a crisis center.

"We all know," he said, "that you often throw yourself on the live grenade that is Dad to protect us. You let us still have, well, Dad."

It had been a conscious decision I'd made early on when bipolar disorder and manic episodes ruled our days. I told myself that while I could do little to keep the illness from affecting Ron, I could do my darnest to make sure it did not affect our children or their love for their father.

"Look!" says Bonnie and gestures to a family of deer standing deer a grove of trees. "How pretty!" The doe and three fawns stand motionless on the hillside while the bells of the carillon echo in the air.

I take a deep breath. Sometimes the ache is so deep and raw that I need a few moments to recover. My daughter understands. We watch the deer for a moment and listen to the fading music, then pull around the curve at the top of the hill. She stops her car next to the bent oak tree.

Love waits for me round the bend, leads me endlessly on
Surely sorrows shall find their end
And all our troubles will be gone

I reach into the back and gather up the poinsettias as Bonnie surveys the area. "It's quiet up here," she says. "Even though the highway is right over there. It's a good spot for Daddy. He liked to be near the action!"

Silently we walk towards Ron's final resting place. In the last sixteen months, the grass has grown over the burial mound. Bonnie stoops and brushes dried leaves and grass from her father's marker, tracing his name with her finger. Ronald A. Cobourn. 1951-2019. We remove the fall flowers from the holder and struggle with the poinsettias, arranging and rearranging until she is satisfied. We kneel there for a few moments, our memories thick. She takes my hand as we walk back to the car.

I know in my bones, I've been here before
The ground feels the same, tho the land's been torn
I've a long way to go, the stars tell me so
On this road that will take me home.

"I don't come here often," she says. "He's not really here."

"Just what Allen says," I reply, thinking of my youngest child whose autism made acceptance of his father's death difficult. "Allen says it's just Dad's old broken body that he doesn't need anymore."

"He's right," she says and she pops the locks on the car doors. We slide in. "Daddy's in heaven now. He's not sick anymore." She puts the key in the ignition and turns to me. "Thanks," she says quietly.

"For what?"

"For giving Dennis and Allen and me the best part of Daddy. For letting us have that part." She puts the car in gear and sighs. "We know it wasn't easy." She pulls away from the grave site and slowly drives down the hill.  

I touch my hand to my heart. "But I kept the best part, too," I say. 

Bonnie smiles and we exit the cemetery
as the bells begin to play again.

And I know what I've lost and all that I've won
When the road finally takes me home
I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home

One Last Gift

4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21:4

It's been four months. Exactly four months. The memory of that night will, I think, never fade. Bonnie and I walking into the house to see Ron sitting in his chair, sleeping. The call to 911. The house full of EMT's and police. Bonnie's phone call to her husband and her brother. My calls to my Dad, my brother, Ron's brother and mom. My call to my best friend Chris.The breath caught in my throat as the EMT's tried to revive Ron. The tears that choked me when my husband was pronounced dead. Allen, who lives on the upper edges of the autism spectrum, holding an ice cube in each hand to keep himself centered. The older kids gathered on the back deck, arms around each other.

We'd known the moment would come. But not this soon.

Four months. I've moved through 123 days now, taking care of final arrangements, dealing with insurance and medical equipment. I've been beside Allen as he used magical thinking to come to terms with the sudden death of his father. I've been there for the older kids and let them talk when they needed to, cry when they had to. I've tried to be a support to Ron's mother. I've gone back to work as an ESL teacher in an urban high school. I've paid bills and kept house and found a way to manage without Ron's social security income. I've picked out a grave marker. I've stopped waking up at night to check on Ron, who slept downstairs in a hospital bed for the last nine months. I've rearranged the living room, pushed my queen size bed to a corner of my bedroom. I've moved on. A little, anyway.

But the 13th of every month throws me back to that night 123 days ago, that night when I came
home to find Ron had, quietly and without fanfare, slipped away. I keep the tears at bay by keeping busy, teaching my students how to construct a sentence in English, working with the kids at church, playing Rack-o with Allen.

Plain and simple, I miss Ron's presence. Not his illness or the nursing tasks that fell to me. Just,
well, him.

I feel no guilt at his death. I know the truth of what my oldest son, Dennis, said to me the night his father died. "Mom, you sacrificed your life for Dad. No one could have done more than you did." In that truth there is some consolation. Despite the challenges of the last 19 years, Ron knew he was loved.

But still, the 13th of each month--and every month has one--looms. A hard day to get through. So far, there have been four of them, different from the other 119 days in their sharpness, the details of his final day imprinted in my brain.

In the early hours of today, November 13, the fourth of the 13's I've lived without Ron, I was given a gift. In the early morning hours, when I was poised between sleep and wake, huddled beneath my blankets in the knitted shawl I call my Widow's Wrap, the door to my bedroom opened. Ron walked it. Actually, he strode in. Not the Ron who 123 days ago fell asleep in his easy chair and woke up in Heaven. Not the Ron who suffered through 26 surgeries. But the Ron whose pictures sit on the shelf in the dining room, smiling at me as I wrote this blog. The well Ron, The whole Ron.

"Don't wake me up," I told him. "I don't need to get up until the alarm goes off."

He walked over to the bed and gently lowered himself to the mattress. "I didn't come to wake you up," he said. He laid down next to me and put his arms around me, warming me the way my Widow's Wrap had during the cold night. "I just came to tell you that I'm okay. I wanted you to know that."

I think he stayed for a while, until the alarm went off and I found my wrap pulled up around my shoulders.

Maybe I was dreaming. And maybe not. Perhaps it doesn't matter.

What matters is this: Ron, sick for so long, is now okay.

And I guess that means I can be okay, too.

A Memory in Three Parts: Part Three

December 1, 2002. 5PM

It is growing dark outside when I leave the hospital and the cold air, holding a promise of snow, nips at my  nose. I have post-poned this last leave-taking as long as I can; now the red streaks of the setting sun on the horizon make it unlikely that I will return to the beach house before twilight descends and will be driving down Route 1 at a time when my vision is at its worst. Still, I am reluctant to make this final departure. A hundred times, as I sit in the parking lot, I am tempted to return to the vigil at Mom's bedside, holding onto her fragile hand and listening to her labored breathing, knowing that before long her brain will stop sending signals to her heart to beat and her lungs to fill with air.

I cry openly on the drive home, alone in the car. The rest of my family--husband and children--wait at the beach house, suitcases packed and ready. Mom no longer inhabits the body that lies in the bed at BeBe Hospital. Dad and I have debated this at her bedside. Is she already in Heaven or is her soul lingering with us for a while longer? We have come to no conclusion. The doctors tell us that "the lights have gone out" for Mom and she is no longer aware of what is around her. The nurses, though, seem to think that even those who are comatose can hear our voices, so we have kept up a cheerful line of chatter for the last three days.  Sometimes we cried and told her how much we will miss her, and sometimes we laughed with stories from our life as a family. Before I leave her for the last time, I kiss her and assure her that I will take care of Dad. Then I leave, my heart breaking.

Harvey has already left for his long and lonely drive back to North Carolina. Both of us have volunteered to stay with Dad, but he has insisted that we go back to our own lives. He will sit by the side of his wife of 52 years. His own good-bye to her will be private.

December 2, 2002. 8AM

I have just returned home from school where I told the principal about my mother. He has sent me home and insisted that I not return until the end of the week. The light on the answering machine is blinking.

"Linda? This is Dad. Mom passed away at 6:45 this morning."