Six years ago 2005 was coming to an end. My husband and our four kids and I were in Nevada, we were spending time with family after Christmas, and were about to drop my step sons off with their Aunt and Uncle, who would in turn be the ones to bring them home. I was still battling "morning" sickness and horrible headaches, which made for an interesting 600 mile drive, and impacted any "quality" time I could squeeze in with my family...
...Will, the kids' "uncle" (he was an employee that moved to Wyoming with us when we moved our business, he lived in the basement of every home we lived in the three Wyoming locations we lived) was home, alone, but had the phone number of people from church and a couple other employees he was close with, if he needed to reach someone. You see, in an irony I have yet to been given any sort of understanding, Will's aggressive Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma had come out of remission...with vengeance; just as he had discovered it the first time, while I was pregnant and very sick. We had hoped to bank Michael's cord blood to so Will could have the stem cells, but in 2003 few places would do cord blood transfusions to non-blood related family. Now in 2005 and with my second little boy to be born in July of 2006, we hoped Will would hold on long enough for a cord blood transfusion. Tumors were spreading like wildfire; (two of his biggest ones were one behind his eye, and a huge one on his neck) to help alleviate the pressure on his eye, he had to wear his "pirate patch", without it, the pain and pressure was simply too much to bear. This time wasn't like the last, we didn't have to fight with him to get treatments, this time he went willingly, and again, ironically, this time the treatments made him sick. It was in a time of sickness that I called our Pastor Bryan. Bryan and Will very close, and Bryan had spent quite a lot of time with Will over the 2 1/2 years we lived in the Casper area trying to help him with his anger at God about his 12-year-old son's battle with leukemia, the pain and suffering he watched his little boy go through, and the pain of laying his son to rest. Will hated God, but God never gave up on Will. Bryan and his wife Melissa came over to our house in response to my phone call, I really wanted Bryan to pray with Will and lay hands on him, but God had even bigger things in store. I had brought Will something to eat and told him Bryan wanted to come over and talk...and pray with him... When Bryan went down to talk to Will, he walked into Will's room, and Will said, "pray with me Padre." In those moments, Will prayed the prayer that changed everything, he asked Jesus for forgiveness, and invited Him into his heart. Well, that was in November of 2005. On December 31st, Will was in our home, alone, and unbeknownst to anyone, other than Will and the Lord, things had taken a drastic turn, for the worse...
January 2nd, 2006, we said our good-byes to our family and friends and headed back on 600 miles of snow-covered interstates and highways. We had stopped in Rawlins, WY to eat, and well, I had "morning" sickness remember... so I was feeling crummy and paid for dinner to watch it go down the drain...I don't know what time it was, but it was dark out, when my sister called and said, "It's Gramma S., she is very sick and it doesn't look good." I looked at my husband and said, "I need to go to New York, I have to say good-bye to my gramma." He looked at me, full of sympathy and understanding, and asked the most obvious yet horribly painful question, "How do you expect to fly? You'll spend the whole time in the bathroom, you are too sick...But if you think you can do it, look into tickets in the morning and we will see what we can do." I wanted to take the kids so she could meet Michael, she had met Cheyla already but she wasn't even two yet, I wanted them to know what an amazing woman she was. When we got home that night, I was exhausted and an emotional basket case, we decided not to wake Will, we would let him know we were home in the morning. January 3rd, 2006... I woke up, got sick, started the computer, got sick, searched frantically for tickets, and messed around with dates. I called to talk to my gramma to let her know I was coming, my Aunt assured me that she could hear me, I just had to get there, I just had to see her. My Book-Keeper had to come over first thing that morning, there were some papers I needed to sign and things to look at. When she got to the house we started going over somethings, and I had to run to the bathroom...again...the whole time thinking "Lord, this has to stop, I need to get to New York, I can't do this, I can't be this sick..." As I walked out of my bedroom I heard Lisa, my Book-keeper talking, Will had come upstairs. I hadn't been down to see him yet, because I was so frantic about buying plane tickets, I thought as soon as I made my purchase I would go down. As I came down the hall-way I could only hear Will, I couldn't see him, then, when Lisa turned around, I say Will and blurted out "Have you called your doctor, what is going on?" Honestly I don't remember what he looked like that made me panic and grab my phone and stumble around trying to call his Oncologist, I asked Lisa to please help me get the kids ready, I was taking Will the hospital..
As Lisa helped me with the kids, I finally reached someone at the Oncology office and they told me to bring him in, I insisted that I take him to the emergency room, they insisted more that I bring him to them...I listened to them...not that it would have changed things in the long run, but he could have gotten something for the pain much, much faster. Will didn't remember the last time he had been able to go to the bathroom, he had to go, but couldn't, he didn't know how long it had been, at one point in time he accidentally locked himself out of the bathroom and couldn't get the key to unlock it for quite sometime. I asked him where all his meds were so I could get them, I said my good-byes to Lisa, and Will was already downstairs, I went down to help him get his pills, and he couldn't make it up the stairs.... I desperately pleaded with God to please give me the strength I needed, because I was about to fall apart. God answered with David, another employee who happened to stop by to get something out of our garage, and came in to check on everyone and tell his buddy, Will, hello. David walked in as I was trying to figure out how I was going to get Will up the stairs, David carried Will up the stairs, and carried him into my car. I called my husband, but he didn't really understand what I was telling him because I was an emotional, irrational mess... David followed me to the Oncologist, and carried Will out of the car and into the wheelchair. Will, Cheyla, Michael and I waited, and waited and waited... he tried to go to the bathroom, probably 5 times, to no avail. When the doctor finally came in to see him, he check Will's oxygen levels, yelled out to the nurse and said, "call and ambulance." I looked at him, full of emotion and rouge pregnancy hormones and said, "I told your nurse on the phone that I was taking him to the hospital, she insisted that you told me to bring him here..." I didn't say anything more, I believe the look on my enraged face said more than any amount of words could. While waiting for the ambulance I made arrangements for a friend, Dixie to come and get my kids, she was going to meet me at the hospital. I had the kids say good-bye to Uncle, and we left while the EMT's loaded him onto a gurney...On my way to the hospital, I called Melissa and asked if her and Bryan could get to the hospital like now. I called my husband, who was working, and told him he needed to come down, and at first he though Will needed pain medication or a catheter, why would he need to be there, I think I screamed at him and told him to get to the hospital, and if he didn't believe me, ask David. He was swamped with work, and my irrational tone was very difficult for him to grasp what I was trying to say.
At the hospital, my husband, Bryan and Melissa got there while the ambulance took what seemed like forever to get there, we sat there praying, talking, Melissa held my hand... The nurse told us we could go back... and to my horror, they hadn't given him a catheter or pain medication, they wanted to "run some tests" first... I asked to speak to a doctor, and as discretely as Shirley McClain Terms of Endearment, or Sally Field in Steel Magnolias, I explained that he is in the end stages of cancer, he is in pain, he can't pee; tests won't do anything for him, he needs a catheter and pain medication and he needs it now. Will was catheterized, given pain medication, then taken to x-ray or MRI or CT scan, where they discovered the tumors on, in and around his kidneys. While he was in radiology, I called his ex-wife and told her that his daughter needed to get here, she argued and said she was leaving the next day to go back to Hawaii where she was going to school, we got into a bit of an argument she insisted that all they needed to do was switch his meds, I insisted that this was the end, and I finally just blurted out that if Siara wants to say good-bye to her dad she needs to get on a plane like now.
When the pain medication and catheter seemed to alleviate the sheer torture that Will was in, they moved him up to a room. I left so I could get the kids and go home... When I got to Ken and Dixie's house, I was filled them in and as I was my phone rang, my heart sank, I knew...it was my dad, I had called him earlier to let him know about Will, and to please let a mutual friend of Will and my dad know about Will's condition, so he knew how my day had been, but I knew, this phone call wasn't a phone call to check on how things were going... I stared at my caller ID, Ken saw the tears in my eyes and he said, "is everything alright?", I said, "this is my dad calling to tell me that my gramma has passed away." I wish I was wrong. I hate cancer.
My dad told me he would let me know when arrangements had been made, but would understand if I wouldn't be able to be there. I thanked him, told him I loved him, hung up the phone and just sobbed. In that moment, the Lord placed His hand on my shoulder, and gently whispered "You won't make it to the end of the week, before you are saying final good-byes again."
The order of events is a total blur following that. Wills brothers and sister were doing all they could to get here, to say their goodbyes, and I remember on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 walking into his room and saying, "they need to let him have a bath, and we need to get him home." Will was a clean person, I knew he needed to feel clean, what I didn't know is he already told the nurse that he needed to go home, he didn't plan on dying in a hospital. It wasn't until Friday, January 6th, 2006 that Will came home, arrangements had been made with hospice, but it always seemed weird to me, I knew he was coming home to die. His last sibling got here, and was able to talk to Will, and when Will fell asleep we all went upstairs, the hospice nurse had some things she wanted to go over with everyone. (It was strange to me because all I remember thinking was they are talking short and long-term, but he didn't come home to live, he came home to die, in the same room where he gave his life over to the Lord) Siara wanted to be with her dad, so she went back down stairs, and after a few minutes a panic-stricken "MOM!" was yelled from Will's room, we all ran down stairs, this was it. Everyone said their good-byes, I called my husband to tell him to hurry home this was it, I called Bryan and Melissa...I sat on the bed holding his hand, he sighed, and cooed, like a baby, when it looks like they are talking and smiling at angels. I knew he was seeing his Savior coming for him, he was at full peace, it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, the sobbing in the background faded, I felt the hand of the Lord on my shoulder... When Will's spirit was gone, and only his physical body remained, his family continued talking to him, and a couple of minutes later he the hospice nurse called the time of death.
...To be continued
Originally posted on my
Life in the Motherhood blog on Wordpress.com on Jan.4th 2012
I just finished up writing today's devotion: "