Sitting vigil

'Why not me? ... I've had a wonderful life'

Editor's note: This is a column I wrote on Friday, July 20, 2007, while caring for my wife, Joel, the Sweetheart of my Rodeo, as we faced her terminal cancer. She died early the next morning.

The disease — wicked lung cancer — was diagnosed in the summer of 2006.

As we made the awful journey together, while sometimes I despaired, she remained cheerful even in the face of a terrible and certain fate.

Of course, her optimism wasn’t a cure, but it helped me learn something about life. I share these stories to preserve them for my family and others who care. I hope they have some value to you, too.

Joel smiling a few weeks before her death from cancer.

I am sitting vigil now. My sweetheart has slipped into the realm of the still breathing but not seeing, alive but on the edge of death, preparing for God to take her away.

As I write, it is Friday morning, the gray clouds await the sun's warmth to chase them back to the ocean. The finches have set up their choruses.

Hummingbirds twitter and chase. The squirrels have made forays to the seeds kicked to the ground from the bird feeders.

By later today or tomorrow or the next day, my Joel's spirit will likely have been lifted from her body.

This has been a long, hard road.

My wife, partner, friend, lover, soul mate was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer a year ago -- looking back, I am convinced the disease began its relentless and terrible attack at least a year before that.

During these months, Joel has lived deliberately, intentionally, choosing a path of light and celebrating life, eschewing despair, even though the end we are coming to has been a near certainty since the day we heard the awful news.

She told me often that there was a reason for this journey, hard as it is. That all moves according to the mysteries of God's plan and that in the end everything would be all right.

Early on, she told a friend and pastor, "I could cry about this and say 'why me,' but I'm not going to live my life that way."

And she hasn't.

Only once do I remember Joel crying and that was only a few days ago, when in a state of pain and agitation, she cried, "Mama, mama" and the tears flowed.

She has remained true to her fountain of good cheer and celebration throughout.

Looking back through the photographs of the last year, I see smile after smile radiating even though the cancer and chemotherapy ravaged her body.

Her resolute faith and optimism has rippled through me, friends and family, church and the community around her.

Last summer, when the gravity of the disease became clear, we talked.

"Honey, do you remember Dan Quisenberry?" she asked.

Quiz was a ballplayer, an ace relief pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, and the best of his time.

A few years after he retired from baseball, Quiz was diagnosed with a cancer that claimed the 45-year-old within months.

His teammate, retired Royals catcher John Wathan, said of his friend: "The thing that struck me the most during his sickness was that people asked him all the time, 'Do you ever say "why me?" ' And he'd say, 'No! Why not me? I've had a great life and a lot of blessings from God, but why am I any different from anyone else?' "

And after reminding me of the story, Joel turned and said, "Why not me? I've had 26 wonderful years with you. I've had (our son) Jesse. I've had a wonderful life. Why not me?"

So, in face of that kind of that kind of optimism, how can I not take a lesson in living? Through our tears and the pain of losing an angel, we will celebrate this precious life.

Editor’s note: At the time of the writing, I was on leave from the North County Times to care for Joel.

In those last days, she rested in a hospital bed nestled into our bedroom. I slept beside her.

At about 2 a.m. Saturday morning, July 21, I kissed her, whispered goodnight and “I love you” and closed my eyes.

At 7 a.m. or so I woke and could hear no sound of gentle breathing. Sometime while I sleeping, she slipped away.

She had retired as a Lt. Colonel in the Air National Guard. Her ashes are interred in the wall at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma.

I miss her beyond my telling. Yet, as with her confession, I, too, have had a wonderful life. Thank you.

Amen.