Peace in the Darkest Storm

Do you want me to comfort you? Open your Bible.

I rolled over in bed and groaned. “NO. Ugh, fine, but it better be right there. Like, I’m going to open the Bible app and the verse of the day better be God shall wipe every tear from their eye. I’m not digging for it and then pretending it was You.”

Just open it.

I spent 22 exhausting, horrific days in the hospital at Lee’s bedside. Just tiring and inconvenient at first, but as he slowly got sicker and sicker, the days began to be punctuated by actual terror. All summer I used to wake up every day and check on the status of his disease. I’d look over his latest bloodwork, take stock of his current symptoms, and run them all through the calculators that gave him an approximate prognosis. All summer, his numbers were stable. 3% chance of death in the next three months. 20% estimated mortality in the event of surgery. Stable.

The stomach pain started sporadically at first. Gallbladder, I was sure, but Lee didn’t agree, and when we went to the emergency room once, twice, the doctors just called it heartburn and sent us home with double strength antacids. It made sense. Liver disease had caused water to accumulate on his body everywhere. He’d been telling doctors for years that he never shed enough water, and they all laughed at him. The fat man who thought he was retaining water. No one was laughing now. The water pressed on all his organs, wore him down, sapped his strength. Made sense that it would cause him extreme heartburn, too.

He decided to deal with the pain. Sometimes he’d get up in the middle of the night and sit on the couch. I couldn’t help him so I’d sleep at the end of the bed with my head closer to his place on the couch. He liked that, he never liked to feel alone.

At the hospital, those numbers began to climb. Like a rollercoaster. Interesting at first, almost exciting. But like a rollercoaster, knowing that you are safe. A little swoop and things go back to normal. It was his gallbladder after all. He needed surgery but by then he was too sick for a full procedure. They did a bridge procedure instead, just a little tube to drain the gallbladder and try to take some of the pressure off his system, but that made him sicker, too. When his kidneys started to fail I stopped checking the numbers and started praying out loud for a miracle.

On one of the last days that Lee could still hold a good conversation he caught me crying. He’d spent hours two days before talking with the pastor of our family’s church and it had lit him up. “Hey,” he said, “I want you to pray with me. I want you to help me talk to God.”

He wanted to talk to God. In the last twenty years, it had always been “your God.”

“Let’s do it now,” I said.

We held hands, both hands, folded on his hospital table. I prayed the sinner’s prayer, simple and honest, but Lee elaborated on it, as he would, of course, made it his own. Not a rote prayer, but a sincere cry out to the only One that is still there when all the trappings fall away. The only One that would be able follow him when he finally had to walk somewhere I wasn’t allowed to go, too. In the middle of our prayer, a nurse tried to pop in, and I tried to slip my hands out of his, but Lee held them firmer and shook his head at the nurse. “Come back in five minutes.” We prayed longer.

The next night he was tired and in pain. I had no way of knowing it would be one of the last nights he could say anything more than “I love you.” Even as the days progressed and he got sicker and more tired, I couldn’t really see it. Today was a bad day, I’d tell myself. Tomorrow will be better. The next morning we’d have a few sentences of good conversation, then pain would take over again. But that particular night, he was able to talk to me. Still in pain, but able to talk.

“Can I, uh, read you something from the Bible?” I asked. “Just something that I was thinking might be helpful for you.”

“Sure,” he said. “Read it to me in the King James, that’s the one I grew up with.”

I pulled open the app and found the verses I’d been looking for earlier. Philippians 4. One of the most encouraging chapters in the Bible. I started in verse 4, continued through 7, the one I really wanted to share with him, the one I’d gone digging for. “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” I kept going and stopped after 8, continuing through that famous litany of how to guard our thoughts. It goes like this: Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

I stopped there, right after 8. That was enough. I didn’t want him to get overwhelmed.

He smiled slowly. “That’s really good. I like the part about the peace of God. Read it to me again, but in a simple version after all. Remember I am new to this.”

I read it all again slowly, from the NLT. He smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Rach.”

It wasn’t the last good night, but one of them.

I don’t think I want to think too hard about the nights after that – not at all about the last one of all. One trick I’ve learned, just this summer in fact, for dealing with my anxiety is that if I don’t stop at the time and intensely record the details of an event that causes me pain or fear, the event is much more easily dusted over by the soft snow of the passage of time. But I will say this: my husband was in pain, there is no way to pretend he wasn’t. He endured it because he wanted to fight to continue in this world. His body lost the battle, his soul never did. Even in the worst of the pain, he was kind, so kind to the people that were trying to help him. He always advocated for himself, but never rudely. He always said please and thank you. Even there, not just a simple please or thank you, but gratitude with an explanation for why their help was so valuable and what made their specific help good for him. He made friends with his doctors and nurses and janitors. He knew how many kids they had and what their country of origin was like.

This morning I woke up slowly. Last night had been so painful. Trick or treating without Lee is wrong. The beautiful night air was poison in my lungs. I ate half a peppermint patty from Julius and the tiny Butterfinger Breyen slipped me. Nothing else. I kept seeing his silhouette out of the corner of my eye, coming out the door to collect the Dad Candy tax and make fun of all the kids costumes. The holidays were when he was happiest. Saddest, too, sometimes. Somehow he wanted more from them than they were ever really ever to give him. Every year he would plan something more elaborate than the year before, trying to reach some perfect level of joy. Better food, more festive music. Draw more friends and family into his celebrations.

Doing any of that without him, it feels so wrong.

Do you want me to comfort you?

I opened the Bible app alone in my bed. I squinted at the screen. I can’t read the screen without my glasses anymore so I held it away from my face.

Verse of the day: Philippians 4:9. The verse I had stopped just short of reading to Lee. The closing, really, of that particular passage:

Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

I read Philippians 4 to Lee because I wanted him to have God’s peace during his storm. I didn’t know I had saved a little for myself. I got out of bed ready to face another painful day.