By Saundra Stewart
My sweet husband has now been gone from this earth for three years. If I thought the years preceding his death were difficult, it was because I didn’t have a clue what the years without him would be like! We had “grown together” in an amazing way in our just over fifty years of marriage. We had our disagreements and adjustments, just as any couple who has been together for that length of time has had. But we both felt it was well worth the effort.
When Don began showing symptoms of ALS, we made some decisions that would help me when we got farther down the road. I told Don very honestly that I would never put him in a care facility as long as I was at all able to care for him at home. And I meant it. There were times when he would see my weariness and he would say, “You probably ought to just put me in a home.” Instantly my resolve would revive. “Never!” I insisted.
We talked about what he would like his children and grandchildren to remember most about him. One thing we wanted to do (but never did) was to make a recording of his speaking to each of his children and grandchildren individually. The time just never seemed right, or he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say. You know how it is. It was a great thought, but never carried through to fruition. We both regretted at the end of his life that we hadn’t made that happen.
Don had a whole collection of Bibles. Having been a minister for a number of years and a teacher in church for the years following, he had a nice stockpile. He asked me to collect them all, and he wanted to give each of the grandchildren a Bible. He had marked in them, made notes in them, and some of the pages were a bit worn, but those things would just show the grandkids how much he had used them and treasured them. We took care of passing them out in the final months and weeks of his life.
Continue reading Walk a Crooked Path: A Time of Reflection