A simple goal. Write weekly, forgive myself if I miss a week, or even two, and keep writing for my blog.
By 2022, I had accomplished half-consistently posting at this rate. As a university student, that felt good. If I could continue like that, I could start seriously working on my other goals: grow my social media presence and my YouTube presence.
I bought tools for creating and editing content. I strapped myself in. I only needed a little time to adjust to fall semester.
Then October came.
Call it a death wish. For some time, I had hoped to visit my husband’s hometown in Massachusetts during autumn. Experience orange, yellow, and red fall leaves everywhere. Everyone said that no other season could compare to the beauty of autumn in Massachusetts. So, when my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital in critical condition, it seemed I might finally see the unbeatable sight.
My husband debated whether or not to fly out. We had waited for this time—for when the diabetes and failed kidneys and obesity and who knows what else would stop flirting with our father’s life and decide to commit. We wondered how it would happen. Would he heal enough to go to a care center, only to return and die later? Would his ability to live collapse within the week? Each day of October felt like a Jenga piece moving out and up to the top, wobbling the tower, but not causing it to fall.
When an error occurred in an initial surgery, we could see the imbalance. The tower would not hold for long.
Yet, homework still came per usual. No one knew. No one could sense the shift in nature. My husband, Josh, and I would need to tell them. Some professors said they would extend homework by a couple days. Some said that we could have as much time as we wanted.
Meanwhile, I pulled up a draft for my blog, only to close it a few minutes later. Another day, I’d do the same. Then I stopped pulling up blank screens and told everyone I needed a break.
I couldn’t keep up with work, school, taking care of my husband, and trying to deal with my own worries, let alone write a blog post to encourage others. Who would encourage me? Those who eventually found out gave great remorse to my husband. Even when he wasn’t there, and friends talked of the situation, the question was “how is Josh doing?”
While I appreciated the support Josh had, I felt forgotten. The dying man may not have given life to or raised me, and the whole family may have had a mixed relationship with him, but the situation affected me in deep, diverse ways.
While he depended on life support, I thought about death. Would we feel when he left? Would we feel him around us, as a spirit strolling in and out of rooms? Would I feel the choking fear that he felt when the day came for me to die?
Did I feel afraid? Yes.
Call it selfish, but I thought more and more about my own death as I saw my father-in-law approach his. I had my beliefs about God, but they didn’t apprehend my wonderings. How did life end? Like a flame quenched by wetted fingers? Or like water, transitioning from a hot spring to condensation to rain? Ending or just changing?
Maybe I would have felt more relief if my faith had locked up and hid my questions from me. However, people in my church and life told me to search for answers. In the scriptures, God told me the same. So, as my thoughts grew more vivid, and the answers evaded me, I called a friend.
The more I explained my thoughts to her, the more I had better thoughts come to me, through my friend and my own reasoning. My heart and mind started to determine that life acted more like water—changing, but not ending. I could not give much explanation for this, except for the fact that my feelings, my thoughts, and me—my personality, my internal being—felt ongoing. Without end.
That thought might save my sanity when my death day comes. Unfortunately, my father-in-law did not have such comfort. His conditions worsened and his fear heightened. At one point, he did not have any ability to respond or interact, and we were told that we’d have to choose whether or not to stop life support. Then, the day the nurses were going to unplug him, he gained consciousness. He told them to let him live.
This tug and pull game went on and on. The doctors at the hospital ranked among the highest in the nation. People said they could keep a rock alive, if they needed to. They offered surgeries and procedures and installations of more machines to support an ending life. My father-in-law wanted it all.
Then, some men from his church gave him a blessing. His two eldest sons visited him. Words came out of my father-in-law’s mouth. Words we never would have thought him capable of uttering.
He wanted off life support. No surgeries. He would let himself slip away. No more medical bills, no more pain. He felt called to the other side.
That’s when Josh decided to book a flight. I wanted desperately to come as well, but we couldn’t even afford for Josh to go. We had gracious help to pay for him, and we didn’t want to push that.
On the Saturday morning I dropped Josh off, I saw this figure of help and told my account of wishing I could have gone. The pain the dug at my insides when I learned my father-in-law had asked if I was coming too.
Our figure of help opened their mouth, aghast. How had they not thought about offering to assist me too?
That’s okay, I said. We didn’t want to push about anything. We had help enough.
And yet, the person insisted they get me to Massachusetts, for the organization they pulled from had supplies for this very thing.
Without letting anymore seconds pass by, I bought a ticket to fly out on a red-eye that night. Josh’s eldest sister would leave before we arrived, but that meant that his father only had one child left to see before they stopped running the machines.
On his way over, Josh had gone to the wrong gate and missed a flight, so he arrived late in the night and went to sleep. I would arrive Sunday morning and go with him and his mom to the hospital immediately. Then, they would let his father-in-law go.
The nerves electrified within me. My eyes did not droop and my lack of sleep did not cause my body to slump. I felt ready to say goodbye.
At the layover, I sat down on the hard airport seats. I stared at the blaring light of the television. Looked around at the tired people. My phone adjusted out of airplane mode. A text came in.
Sunday, October 30 at 1:46.
He passed away
Josh had not seen him. I had not seen him. We stayed to help his mom, though we felt useless and did little but offer our presence. Neither of us wanted to see his body lifeless. That is to say, Josh didn’t want to see his body lifeless, and I didn’t want to speak up about seeing it without him.
October ended. I still dressed up for Halloween. Not one trick-or-treater knocked on the front door.
One day, I asked his mother if his father knew I had been able to get a ticket to come. She said he knew that Josh and I were both coming. I hold that knowledge close to me.
We flew back. Josh wrote an obituary over weeks instead of the usual days. The family planned the funeral for December, when everyone would have been visiting for Christmas anyway. Finals finished and we flew back. The funeral passed, and then one could heard a great rush of air coming out of the entire family.
It had finished.
The children smiled and played, and we smiled too. We visited new places, saw pieces of art and science, and opened presents. Josh’s mom prepared to move, so she could live near her grandchildren and spend her days playing. We laughed in the home, and no one made us to stop. We talked of the past, but we felt the future.
When Josh and I came back to Utah and 2022 passed, we made plans for our future schooling, family, and life. I decided I would write again. I didn’t know how to re-enter into this world with my writings, after I had left for a time that many would say is too long. However, I no longer wanted to write because others said I should do it every week, every day.
I’m writing now because it works for me. I hope to share something good with you, but despite the algorithms that say I must post nonstop, I am not going to upend life to flood your phones and your laptops. We deserve a better balance than that. We deserve to be able to fly out and say goodbye to loved ones before they die. We deserve to live well, while we live on this earth.
So, going forward, I still hope to post once a week, but I have great plans ahead of me. My posting frequency could shift, like it needed to at the end of last year. Please know I will not go away or abandon you for long, but with time, things will always change. Stick with me for now, and I’ll show you how it goes. Thanks for the support, and I hope you can find a balance for your own life too. Live it well.
Love, MRC
Read MRC 