After You Read

You have just read We Die.

I knew Darrell was dying. I had heard the prognosis. I had listened while doctors spoke about hospice and death. I had watched our children say what they wanted their father to know while he was still there to hear them. I had told him I would miss him.

And still, some part of me kept looking for an opening.

I can see that more clearly from here than I could while I was living it.

Knowing Wasn't the Same as Taking It In

Ten days before Darrell died, I was still hoping we could make it to the beach house we had rented for Easter and our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.

We went.

He was too weak to leave his bed, so Easter came to him. We ate and played outside his bedroom windows. I played with the grandchildren where he could see us.

Oddly, I enjoyed them. Truly.

He was dying, and we were having Easter. Both were true.

By the next evening, I could no longer push away what I was seeing. Darrell was actively dying.

Ain't Dead Yet

As our friend Bill prayed over Darrell, I heard him speak about what a good husband, father, pastor, and friend Darrell had been.

Had been.

I was disturbed. I still needed the impossible.

Then Darrell reached toward me, his hand accidentally striking my face before his fingers began caressing my cheek.

Later he looked at me.

“Ain't dead yet.”

He was still making light for my sake. But the truth was he wasn't dead. It's what I needed; my mind had not yet surrendered the possibility that there might still be something I could do.

Come Back

“Is this it?” my daughter exclaimed as Darrell took his last breaths. I understood the disbelief. How could something so enormous happen so quietly?

Then I threw myself over him. I no longer had to worry about hurting his body.

“Come back.”

I begged him. I reminded him of our deal. He was supposed to come back.

He didn't.

What I Can See From Here

Later, when the hospice nurse rolled his body to wash his back, some of the concoction I had been giving him spilled from his mouth. He hadn't been able to swallow

I had known he was dying. I had agreed to hospice. I had watched his body fail. I had listened to the breathing that meant death was near. And I had still tried to get one more drop into him.

I don't look back at that woman and sneer at her. I recognize her.

Some part of me knew. Another part had not caught up yet.

Is This You?

After the hospice nurse finished, I noticed that Darrell was wearing one of his favorite T-shirts. I asked her to remove it for me. Then I closed the door.

I knew the funeral director was coming. I knew Darrell had been dead for hours. But we had made a deal, and I needed one more conversation with my husband.

I told him he could let go of me now.

Then the electricity flickered. It was the middle of a cloudless day, and the flickering lasted long enough to startle me.

“Is this you?”

I didn't know. I couldn't prove what had happened in that room. I still can't. I knew the electricity had flickered. I knew what I felt. I knew what I wondered.

I let the question remain a question.

Again

I watched the funeral director take Darrell's body away. We had the viewing and the funeral. We buried him, and my sons had to help me walk away from the grave. But afterward, I couldn't settle. I needed to go back to the cemetery.

Some impossible part of my mind was still imagining that Darrell might come back. If he did, someone would need to let him out of that box.

So I went back.

The grave had already been filled. Fresh dirt covered him.

There was no box to open.

He was never coming back.

When Reality Has to Arrive More Than Once

I knew Darrell was dead before I returned to that cemetery.

I had watched him die. I had stayed with his body. I had watched the funeral director take him away. I had attended his funeral and watched him be buried.

And still I went back.

We sometimes use the term magical thinking for thoughts that do not conform to what we know is possible. I can recognize something of that in my return to the cemetery. But giving it a name does not tell me what it was like to be the woman who got in the car and went back.

Some part of me knew. Some part had not caught up.

Reality had to reach me again. At the cemetery, it did.

Darrell was gone.

But the title of this chapter was not He Dies. It was We Die.

Darrell's death also severed the life in which I had been one half of us. I was still in my body, still moving through the world, but something relational had died too.

A marriage ended. A shared future ended. The ordinary assumption of we—what we would do, where we would go, what we would decide—ended with him.

The days ahead would be accompanied by taunting reminders of how much my life had been held inside of we.

A Quiet Truth to Carry

A Scribble of Your Own

Is there something you know that another part of you has not caught up with yet?