As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4:18)
“Blind? I could be blind?” It wasn’t the news my parents and I expected to hear from the ophthalmologist at Wills’ Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. I was a freshman in college, studying to become a teacher.
But my vision was not being cooperative. I’d worn glasses since I was six, but still walked into walls and fell down steps. During Christmas break, I’d backed my dad’s car into a telephone pole I just didn’t see.
At all.
At nineteen, I needed to change my perspective. I was diagnosed with Keratoconus, a rare disease of the corneas that could lead to distorted vision, double and triple images, and the need for transplants. Oh, and the possibility of blindness.
Have you ever been faced with news that made you rethink the path you were on?
That made you question the way you viewed your life and the world around you?
That made you wary of what your eyes told you?
In the more than forty years since that diagnosis, I’ve learned that I do not always see things for what they are, but I can always trust God for who he is. My own corneas were temporary, but donor corneas have allowed me to have sufficient vision to teach.
I’ve managed to find the humor in my distorted view of the world that is, like my corneas, transient. A gray sweatshirt may look like a cat, a leaf may resemble a mouse, and a mailbox may appear as the image of a man. I keep my eyes on God, who looks not on our outward appearance, but into our hearts.
Is there something temporary in your life that is obscuring your vision of the eternal God?
Ring-a small band, usually of precious metal, worn on a finger and often a symbol of love
Its weight is slight, almost insignificant as it rests in the palm of my hand, but its strength has been enduring. I recall the smooth feel of it when Ron slipped it on my finger oh, so, many years ago, at the beginning of its journey.
We have arrived at the end.
I consider the circle of silver carefully, marveling at the births and vacations and graduations and marriages it has seen, the injuries and surgeries and hospitalizations that might have dulled its shine but didn’t.
Not even death.
I pick up the square black velvet box from my dresser and open it slowly. Inside is the mate to the ring in my hand, larger and bulkier, the ring Ron’s painfully swollen finger could not endure for the last 18 months of his life.
“I’m keeping your ring,” I whispered to him on that final day. “I’ll keep it safe because you are still my husband.”
The two rings lay side by side on my palm now: the smaller one strong enough to bear the weight of care-giving and loss, the larger one strong enough to bear the weight of pain and sorrow.
A tear slides down my cheek. I am making a decision today, but it is not irrevocable. This small unbroken ring of silver has encircled my finger for the last 20 months while Ron’s has slumbered in the black box.
I can put it back on if I need it.
Tenderly, I slip the two rings—together—into the square box and close the lid quietly, whispering another promise.
“I am no less committed to you now than on the day these rings were new.”
For a moment, I feel the ache of emptiness on my finger, the pain of loss that is always in my heart. I take a deep breath and pick up another ring, also silver, with three small diamonds on its band, the ring Ron gave me on one of the last birthdays we had together.
Past. Present. Future.
Ron is now in my past and for the moment, I stand in the present alone while he waits in heaven, whole and healthy. But he is also in my future.
I will see him again.
I slip the band with the diamonds onto my hand and stow the box with the two silver wedding rings in my jewelry case.
"To them I will give a new name within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughter, I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever." Isiah 56:5
I am wrung out with emotion. Today, eighteen months after my husband's death, I have moved our queen-size bed back into the spot beneath the double windows where it had been until the day he died. On that awful night, I'd shoved his side of the bed against the wall, piling pillows around it to fill the empty space. I slept on my side, facing away from the void.
I am stronger now, I think. Ready to move the bed back. I have found a new life for myself and my autistic son; I have written sixteen chapters of a book I hope will impact the way people view autism and grief; I have dared to envision a life without Ron.
But after I move the bed back and rearrange the pillows, I collapse onto the bed and cry. I have moved into a life without my husband. The knowledge holds both joy and sorrow. When my tears are spent, I get up and look at the room we have shared for 44 years. It is my room now.
Maybe I'll paint it.
Evening comes. Allen and I eat and play a board game, a new routine in our life of two. We watch an Avengers movie while I knit. We talk easily of Ron, how he cheated at Monopoly and loved Iron Man, how his smile was slightly crooked and he yelled at the television set. Allen's acceptance of Ron's death took time and patience. Ron is not forgotten. I think of the Egyptian proverb: You are not dead as long as someone remembers your name.
We remember.
I have said goodnight to my son; he gives me the rare hug he saves for bedtime and follows me into my room where he plops down on Ron's side of the bed.
"You moved it back."
"It was time," I say and he nods. He grabs a pillow from Ron's side and holds it to his face.
"It still smells a little like Dad."
"A little," I agree. I have washed the pillow and enveloped it in a new case, but sometimes I think I still detect Ron's lingering scent.
"Can I sleep with it tonight?"
I shrug. "I guess. Something wrong with your pillow?"
"No," he says. "I just sort of want to be close to Poppa tonight. I thought it would be nice to sleep with his pillow."
"Alright."
Happily, he gathers the pillow in his arm and squeezes it, then rises from the bed and walks towards the door.
"Allen," I say, "you've never called Dad 'Poppa' before. Why now?
He turns back to me, this man child who only knew an ill father. "Well, Mom," he says, "Dad has a new life now. He's not old and sick anymore because God gave him a new body and took him to Heaven." He grins. "And I thought Dad's new life deserved a new name."
Allen is sitting on the steps when I come out of my bedroom, blocking my dash downstairs where I will have just enough time to grab some breakfast before I head off to school. His head hangs low, an attitude of dejection.
“I’m giving up,” he says flatly.
“Alright,’ I say. I carefully move around him and down a few steps before I turn and face him. “What are you giving up on?”
“The dryer.” He sighs and looks up at me. “I tried. I really did. But…” he shrugs, “ nothing’s working.”
I nod sympathetically, but I am actually relieved. For the last three months, Allen has been obsessed with fixing the dryer, verging on a meltdown whenever I mention calling a repairman. “I can fix it!” he’d insisted. “Why won’t you just let me try?”
So I’d let him try. He ordered plugs and cables and cords from Amazon, took the back off the appliance and drilled holes into the panel, and spent days fuming about “companies that make things so they fall apart.” Once a week, I hauled the wet laundry to the laundromat and pondered my son’s need to try and revive things that no longer functioned.
It is a trait, I’ve learned, of those on the spectrum, a reluctance to accept loss. Be it a missing tool or the dryer, Allen simply cannot accept, grieve, or move on until he sees for himself that nothing can be done. It is an obsession that sets him apart from his siblings and keeps the shed in the backyard filled with things he’s “working on.”
And it’s part of the process I needed to allow him to go through when his father died suddenly last year; it began a nine month journey in which Allen tried everything imaginable to get his father to come back. The acceptance was hard won.
I reach out now and touch my son’s shoulder. “It’s alright. I know you did your best. Some things just can’t be fixed.”
He heaves a heavy sigh. “I guess so. At least I know I did everything I could.” He leans his head against his hands and a few tears fall. I know he is mourning more than the dryer. I put my arms around his shoulders and we stay on the steps a few more moments, my breakfast forgotten.
“Well,” he says, standing up, “that’s that. Guess you’ll need to get a repairman.”
I think of the dryer parts strewn around the basement, cords running here and there. It is now the Frankenstein monster of dryers. “Or we can just get a new one.”
He grins. “That’s probably best.” He heads down the steps and I follow. It took nine months for him to accept the loss of his father. It took three months to accept the loss of the dryer.
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
The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing
Isaiah 51:3
The dream felt real to me. The garden grew up around us, scarlet rhododendrons and sunshine yellow daffodils pushing their way through the cracks in the pavement beneath our feet. I breathed in the flowery fragrances of the blooms, marveling at the spring-like abundance so late in the autumn.
I felt a light touch on my arm and smiled at my husband. His image was wavy, translucent. "You did this," he said and waved his hand at the abundance around us. His silver wedding ring--nestled in my jewelry box for the last 15 months--gleamed in the sun.
"I'm no gardener," I said and shook my head. "Everyone knows I make plants die."
Ron smiled gently. "Yes, you are. You've made beauty for me, for the kids, for your students, for your readers. You've taken what was hard and painful and made something beautiful from it." He stamped a strong foot onto the pavement. "You've done what very few people could do."
I took a deep breath. "I did what I had to do."
Ron took my hand. His hair, fully gray the last time I saw him in his casket, was the blue-black of his twenties. "That's just it. You didn't have to." His voice became a gentle whisper. "I know how awful it was, how exhausting."
"For both of us," I said. I noticed that his form was beginning to fade, the lovely blossoms of my garden clearly visible through his frame. "Stay," I said softly.
"I can't," he said. "If I was here," and he turned his head, taking in the abundance around us, "none of this would have happened. I just wanted to tell you, well, I knew you'd be okay. When I had to leave, I knew you'd make a new and wonderful life for yourself. I knew you'd help the kids to move on." He plucked a single pink rose from a bush thar had sprung up next to him. No thorn pricked his hand. He held it beneath his nose for a moment, his clear lungs breathing in the fragrance. "It's your turn now," he said and handed the rose to me.
I took it and touched its velvety petals. "It's lovely," I said.
"Just as your life will be," Ron said. "Your long life. You have lots to do." He blew a kiss towards me. "I'm so proud of you." He melted into the garden.
And I held onto the rose, breathing in the heady fragrance of my husband's love.
There are hot tears running down my cheeks when I wake up a full hour before my alarm is set to go off. I lay quietly for a moment, assessing my feelings: I am unsettled and sorrowful. The last few days have brought many reasons for unrest into my soul; there have been shootings, racial unrest, and lootings near the city high school where I teach. But this feels more private, a personal grief. I fling my arm across to my husband's side of the bed and grab his pillow, bringing it close.
The pillow no longer has Ron's scent. I burrow my face into it, will my heart to continue beating, and the reason for my early morning sadness becomes clear.
The chair.
Last night, my son and I heaved and shoved and pushed my husband's heavy lift chair out to the porch, down the steps, and onto the front lawn where our town's heavy trash truck will pick it up in the morning. Weighing 168 pounds, it was not an easy feat. I clutch Ron's pillow to my chest and remind myself it was equally hard to bring it in.
I'd been looking for a lift chair for my disabled husband for months, but the price tag always made me shudder. The week before Ron's 68th birthday, I saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace: "Lift chair, maroon, good condition, $200." I called the number and arranged to drive down to Kennet Square on Saturday to look at it. My son and I left the house early, telling Ron's hospice nurse we'd be back by noon.
The chair was ugly, but serviceable. We lashed it onto the back of my Nissan with bungee cords and I eased back up Route 1 with my flashers on while Allen kept an eagle eye on the chair. Once home, my strong son managed to push the chair up the hill in front of our house, bully it up the steps, and squeeze it through the doorway. We put it by the fireplace, in perfect line with the television, and made a sign for the seat: Happy Birthday!
I'd wanted the chair to soothe the physical problems of Ron's hurt body; I still had hope that he'd improve. I envisioned the possibility of a future for us, the trip to Hawaii we wanted to take, golden years spent together.
The first week we had the chair, Ron pulled on the remote too hard and snapped the wires; I ordered a new one on Amazon. The second week, Ron pushed his weight against the arm and it pulled away from the frame of the chair; Allen turned the chair on its side and hammered the arm in place. The third week, Ron fell against the foot rest and bent the frame; Allen used a hammer to straighten it out. The fourth week, Ron ripped the pocket on the side; I took a tapestry needle and carpet thread and sewed it back. The fifth week, the electrical cord shorted out: Allen went to the hardware store and bought a new one.
By the sixth week, we had no need of a lift chair.
As faint morning light begins to lighten my bedroom, I wrap my arms around Ron's pillow and hug it. There is a light tap at my door. "Mom?" says Allen. "Are you awake?"
"Yes," I say, sitting up in bed. "Come in."
Allen's 6 foot 6 inch frame fills the doorway.
"Couldn't sleep?" I ask.
"Thinking."
"Me, too." I pat the space on the bed next to me and he sits down, leaning his head against my shoulder. Allen's life on the autism spectrum made accepting his father's death particularly difficult.
"I know it was time to get rid of Dad's chair," he says. "No one but the cat sat in it now. And I know it made you sad to see it everyday. But it feels like there's a...hole, you know?" He puts his hand on his heart. "Like an empty space."
I nod. "But it won't always be empty. We'll fill it with new memories and put Dad into them."
He sighs. We sit there, our heads bowed together, and we hear the rumble of the trash truck as it pulls up to our house and squeals to a stop. Allen makes a move to rise; I put a hand on his knee and he slumps back onto the bed.
"We need to let it go," I whisper and he nods. There are voices, faint and low, drifting across the front lawn. Truck doors slam. We hear the rev of the engine as the truck moves away from thehouse.
Allen rises and looks out my bedroom window. "It's gone," he says. "Dad's chair is gone." I join him at the window, and for a few more moments we gaze out at the empty front yard. Our arms around each other, we cry.
