As I write this, my mind and heart is a jumble of myriad tangled
feelings, thoughts, memories, and pain – each competing with the other and yet
co-existing and draining my strength as they fight their constant battle. This battle?
This war? This is grief. This is love when arms can no longer hold the loved
one.
Less than 48 hours ago, my brother Ben passed away from
septic shock combined with pneumonia that he developed from an infection in a
tube-site for his gall bladder. The tube was initially inserted in February 2017
and his surgeon hesitated to remove both it and the gall bladder for fear of
him experiencing a coronary on the table. He had atherosclerosis (with a total
of 3 stents in various heart arteries, for which he was taking a blood-thinner
since the last heart attack on February 14, 2019.) He also had insulin-dependent diabetes,
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, nephrolithiasis, and chronic renal failure,
and he was on dialysis three times a week.
In fact, that’s how I found out that he was in trouble. His
dialysis nurse called me and said he didn’t show up for his Monday morning
appointment. After trying to reach him, thinking he had overslept, I called a
relative and asked them to go check to see if he was at home. His car was, but
he didn’t answer. After that, I called 911 who patched me through to the RCMP.
They went to his house, saw him awake on his bed through his (main floor)
bedroom window, and he was unable to get up. They broke the door down and
called the EMT people. That would have been around 3 pm or so. The EMTs came
and got an IV started. They took him to the local hospital who assessed him and
intubated him as he was having difficulty breathing. Then they ambulanced him
to the hospital where he normally did his dialysis. They got him there around 7
p.m. Three hours after he got there, he
took a turn for the worse, and went into septic shock. The nurse called me and
asked me or someone to come to the hospital right now. They tried to revive him
three times but to no avail. At 10:15 pm, he was pronounced dead.
And that is what the doctor told me ten minutes later, over
the phone, as I was getting my coat on to make the two-and-a-half-hour trip to
see him. Such pain I had not felt in over six years since my youngest daughter died
at the age of 21.
My night-time trip was cancelled, of course. I made plans to
pack up the next day, and go to the homestead to assess the damage and the
mess. I might have slept four hours that night. The next night, with the help
of some Melatonin, I slept for six hours, although there was one interruption
at five a.m. when Ben’s alarms went off to remind him to get up for dialysis.
Hopefully, tonight will be better.
During my waking hours, I have been doing a lot of thinking
about the difference between existing and living. For most of his life, Ben just
existed. He grew up thinking that he was a nuisance to his parents. He bore the
inner scars of physical and psychological abuse by his mom and abandonment by
his dad who never stopped her, and the bruises of an older brother who
criticized everything he did and regularly pounded on him. He bore other scars
too: a marriage that lasted only 14 years before it ended in divorce,
alienation from his sons, rejection from an endless string of women, as well as
being used by women who befriended him only for his bank account. His was a
lonely life. He battled the loneliness with his art: he could draw landscapes, animals,
and people just by looking at pictures of things. He composed so many songs and
sang them with me and with that older brother when we were all so young (I was
16 at the time, so he was 22 and the other brother was 26) – gospel songs that
were so beautiful you could hear a pin drop when we were done.
Yet he suffered. I remember him coming home from senior high
school and sobbing as he begged me never EVER to judge a man just on his
appearance. I never EVER forgot his words.
Yes, most of his life he was a melancholy man. He existed;
he created beautiful things and appreciated beauty in nature and in people, but
his existence was spent waiting for the next good thing to happen, and being
disappointed time after time after time.
After his divorce in the early 1990s, he moved in with Mom and Dad. He was
there for Mom after Dad passed away, and he made sure he was there to look
after things for her. Others would come in and see him lazing around, as they
called it. He rested because he couldn’t breathe if he got up and moved around.
He had so many ailments: his lungs, his kidneys, his heart, his gall bladder,
his pancreas,… people didn’t understand and he felt a lot of condemnation come
from them. Nobody understood him, he told me, except me. And sometimes even
that wasn’t enough to tame the monsters of hatred and bullying that he
experienced – whether real or imagined – from others.
Once, he even tried to commit suicide. He had finally
learned how to love unconditionally, and his girlfriend stole from him and used
the money to get high.
A few months later that girl died … and it took him months
to make peace with that.
But by that time, he had learned to live. To REALLY LIVE.
You see, in October 2016, Ben had been diagnosed with stage one
colon cancer. And in January 2017, he underwent a six-hour procedure to remove
the cancer along with a 5-inch section of bowel. And when he woke from that
surgery, while he was still recovering in the hospital, he was listening to the
radio and a singer Skip Ewing was singing, “How can he be a king? He’s just a kid.” And
God spoke to him in his heart, and said, “Are you listening, son?” And he responded, tears streaming down his
face, “Yes, Father. I’m here. I hear You.”
From that moment on, Ben started to really LIVE. He had some
setbacks and some heartaches (like the death of that girlfriend). And he was
living on a very limited income, never knowing if he would need to starve in
order to be warm, or to freeze in order to eat. It was hard. It was REALLY
hard. But he was finally LIVING. We would talk on the phone – and I would let
him listen to music that he liked – and he would cry tears of beauty and joy.
He never forgot how God rescued him, miraculously let him live, and would look
after his every need. Even if he misplaced his car keys. Or his needles. Or his
wallet.
Last year, on Valentine’s Day 2019, he suffered a major
heart attack. The paramedics found him and the emergency team had to put an
intravenous shunt through his shin bone to give him liquids. He screamed in
pain and then his heart went into atrial fibrillation. They had to use the
paddles to get him back – and he was “gone” for a few seconds there.
He remembered those few seconds. He felt completely at
peace. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew that he was loved, cared for, and
safe. And from that time onward, he lost his fear of death. He lost his fear of
living, too. And the living he had been doing up until then just intensified.
He could not keep silent about God’s love for him. Anyone who knew him heard
him talk about higher things, spiritual things, wonderful things like love and
joy and peace and goodness. He touched so many people that way: people in
dialysis, people in drug stores, people at church, in grocery store lineups,
everywhere.
That’s not to say that he didn’t have questions. We would
talk for hours at a time as he tried to understand some spiritual concept or
other. We talked almost every day, for up to two or three hours at a time. (It’s
a good thing I have such a good cell phone plan that includes free long
distance!) But every time we talked, he would not hesitate to tell me what he had
been learning, what God showed him or how He helped him find something he
needed. Or met a need in his finances. Or let him talk to someone about his
experiences in the Lord.
And now this week, I have been living in his house without
him here. Memories galore. Yet it feels so surreal: not quite right, like he
should be here laughing and joking with us, listening to YouTube videos, or
talking about how wonderful Heaven is.
And yes, he could not let a conversation go by before he
mentioned how deeply he longed to see his Master’s face, to walk the shores of
Glory with Him, to hug Dad, and to jam with friends and family gone ahead.
And now he is there. And he is LIVING beyond his wildest imaginings – and he could imagine a LOT!!
Good night Ben. See you in the Morning. Keep a chair for
me by the hearth, and say hi to Dad for me. I love you beyond measure.
And … I
will miss you. I’ll never forget what you taught me about how to live life in a
positive way and not just exist expecting the worst.
Thank you. Thank you SO MUCH.
