HAP

Thank you all for your kind words. --Harry

I posted this earlier today on my blog, but thought it would have value for some here as well. I remember to forget forgetting I lost track of the date over the weekend. It happens when you really don't have a good reason to remember. But I don't really need a calendar to find the tenth of any month. All I have to do is look at my behavior and how I'm feeling. My subconscious knows the monthly anniversary of Jane's death even when my conscious mind doesn't. It really starts the night before. I avoid going to bed. When I get there, I don't sleep. I know what Ebenezer Scrooge dreamed that night, but my ghosts visit me the tenth of every month. They are relentless. Someone asked me last month to write a piece about dealing with the failures and regrets after you lose your spouse. I want to answer that question as a last part of my series on being a caregiver. But I don't have an answer. Remember to forgive Jane forgave me before she died. I know that because she said it. But I have yet to figure out how to forgive myself. Intellectually, I know I did all I could have done. I made the best decisions I could, given what we knew at the time. But emotional forgiveness is a very different story. And I also know that even if I find a way to get my emotional side to accept and forgive, I will never be entirely whole. I wrestle with that part of the loss as well--and never more than on the ninth and tenth of the month. I remember confusion The good news is that I cope pretty well the rest of the month. I cook, I clean, I buy groceries and pay the bills. I go out to listen to music or see a play. I laugh. At times, I can even pretend for a few hours that everything is normal. Last night, I buried myself in a book for six hours. I went to bed about 3 a.m. I woke up late, not knowing what day it was. I went to the kitchen and made six separate trips to the refrigerator to gather the ingredients for breakfast, interspersed with doing dishes, opening the drapes, and moving randomly from room-to-room to no earthly purpose. I dropped things. I couldn't get my mind to focus and soon was berating myself for being stupid. I remember why Then it came to me: today marks 73 months since Jane's death. It is the day my mind does not function, the day my body doesn't work, the day I will say hurtful and destructive things to people without a second thought--and not know I've done it if they don't call me on it. I am always a sick human being, but never more so than on the tenth of the month. I should--and usually do--withdraw from the world that day. And so I did today. My only human interaction was with the folks at the flower shop where I bought the monthly bouquet for Jane's grave. The cemetery was empty when I got there--and stayed that way. I put the flowers in the cemetery vase, then stood in the snow and the wind and talked to my dead wife for 20 minutes. Cold memory The clouds scudded across the sky. There is a storm coming in tonight that will melt all the snow. But I always find her grave a cold place. It felt that way before she died, as well. I can dress that stone any way I like, but the flowers do little to blunt the pain. I count my other losses while I am there. My mother-in-law, dead of pulmonary fibrosis, is buried there with her husband, whose body simply shut down over the course of a weekend. My mother, who died of Alzheimer's, and my father, who died of a stroke, have no grave. Their ashes are scattered together in my sister's garden in Seattle, feeding a tree that plays host to hummingbirds throughout the year. Remember the others I think of all the NET cancer patients we have lost since Jane's death, knowing that barring a major breakthrough, we will lose more in the years ahead. I wonder if I have done all I can to change that future, knowing even if I have, it is not nearly enough. And I think of all the people I have lost to other forms of cancer and other diseases--lives cut short by things I could not cure or prevent. Today, I got a note from a man who lost his wife to NET cancer on Christmas Eve. She died in his arms, as Jane died in mine. I gave him what little comfort I could, knowing there is nothing I can do or say that will make any of what he faces feel any better. You think there is nothing worse than that feeling of absolute helplessness when you hold someone in your arms knowing there is nothing you can do beyond what you are doing--and that it does not seem like enough. The days that hurt But it's not the day they die that really grinds on your soul. Nor is it the day you bury them. You have things to do those days--and people to hold your hand. It's all the days that come after--all the days you wake up alone, live alone, and go to bed alone. If you're lucky, as I have been, you find meaningful work to do. If you are really lucky, as I have not been, someone comes into your life to share that burden with. But you never forget--and it never really stops hurting. You learn to cope. You learn to show the face to the world it wants to see. And you talk with the others who have made--and are making--the same journey. You share a secret those who have not lost never really come to understand. And you move forward, as best you can, through a world that has no idea--and no vocabulary that will let them understand until they experience it themselves. And it is, if you have a heart, something you would never wish on anyone. Remember the now The rain has begun. The droplets run down the window across from me. I can hear the clock ticking over my shoulder, the rumble of the furnace in the basement and the sound of my own breathing when my fingers pause on the keys. My stomach grumbles. These are the sounds of an empty house when half its soul is gone. It has been the background noise of my life for 73 months. It is why I fight so hard to end the things that have cost me so much--and why I keep fighting six years after I lost everything that mattered. --Harry I remember Jane's love of the natural world. Her memorial garden centers on stone, but is surrounded by wildflowers, bees, birds, and butterflies.

I moved the last of the stone out of the driveway today and began buttoning up the outside of the house for the winter. I didn't get everything done I wanted to out there this year. It turns out there are only so many hours in the day--and only so many good days to work outside in a year. But I got the back half of Jane's memorial garden done and placed the stone there, got the patio and the garden path done, got the path from the front of the house to the back of the house and along the back of the house done, and started on the two raised beds in the back. The drought did a number on the vegetable garden, but I still have hot peppers to get me through the winter, as well as about 40 pounds of sweet potatoes. Every day has its small progress--it's small blessings. Amid the pain of grief, it is easy to forget the small delights of the first ripe tomato or the last wheelbarrow full of small rock. Come spring, I'll shape the front portion of Jane's memorial, run the gravel path along the south side of the house, build the strawberry beds and replant the blackberries and raspberries that did not survive the dry summer, and maybe build a wall or two. And maybe, in five years or ten, I'll have everything done and be able to settle into maintaining what I've built--both in the yard and on the other things I'm doing. More likely, though, I'll find something more that needs doing. Peace, Harry

Tomorrow, I head to Boston for two days of Visiting Committee meetings for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, starting with a reception for NET cancer donors tomorrow afternoon. I'll have both good and bad news for them. The bad news is the loss this summer of two influential patients who have helped shape NET cancer research and awareness. The good news is we've raised around $900,000 in charitable donations for NET cancer research at DFCI since early December of last year--and have a good shot at reaching $1 million by December 9. Last week, my youngest brother came to visit. We had eight days of walking and catching up and doing some photography projects. And a craft fair netted $75 more for the NET cancer cause Saturday night and let me catch up with some people I haven't seen for a while. Every day has a step forward in it--even days like yesterday where the depression came in waves all day: "You can't always get what you want; but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you can get what you need," as the Rolling Stones would sing it. I harvested sweet potatoes, onions and sweet and hot peppers and began to button up the garden for winter. I didn't get all I wanted, but there's enough there to keep me fed the next few months. There's a metaphor there that maybe fits my current mood. Sometimes it all gets to be too much--but we get what we need, even if it seems otherwise. Peace, Harry

There are few things that give me more delight than holding a new book created by a former student in my hand. For the second time in 30 months I had that experience today. Scott Baker's Traveling Asia arrived today. It's a collection of photographs from his travels across that continent over the last 10 years. They're all nice, but several are extraordinary pieces of photography. I think back to who he was when he walked into my classroom as a shy and terrified freshman almost 20 years ago and I smile. He financed his trips by teaching English to children in Korea. Now, he is training to teach English in Central America. I'm sure there is another book of photography coming from his new travels. And it makes me smile. Pax et lux, Harry

Great news today! 1. The #cureNETcancernow teams have raised over $129,000 so far for the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. With money I know is still out there--and a little help from people who have not yet donated--we should end up with between $140-$150,000 for NET cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. 2. That money all counts toward our DFCI Program for Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Tumors "3-in-3: The Campaign to Cure NET Cancer" goal and, with some other money we know is coming, pushes the total we've raised since December 9, 2015 to $850-$900,000 dollars. Our million dollar goal for the first year is within reach. 3. The amount officially raised by the #cureNETcancernow group puts us in second place among all the groups formed for the Walk. If we were a single team, we would have the third most money raised among all teams. 4. Shuffle for Dana-Farber, the biggest team in our group--with 161 members--has raised over $75,000 so far. The group totals 207 walkers total, spread over four teams. One dollar at a time, we are making a difference in the future for NET cancer patients by funding the daily discoveries that will lead to a cure. Pax et lux, Harry

Pics from tonight and from last Sunday's Walk.

We raised $3020 tonight for NET cancer research between dinner sales and donations. Yes! Pax et lux, Harry

Thank you all for our kind words. I probably need to be here more often, but life has gotten insanely busy between one thing and another. Next week is typical: a pamphlet to draft and design during the day and a fundraiser Monday night, house and yard work Tuesday, with a trip to the bank in there somewhere, two meetings in Boston Wednesday, tests on the nerves in my feet Thursday followed by a fundraising letter, theater that night, prep work for craft fairs later in the month on Friday, Cranberry Fest--relaxation--and theater Saturday, and some bookkeeping on Sunday with meal prep work for the week. People ask me what retirement is like and I have to tell them I don't know--that I didn't retire, just changed jobs. But I got the laundry done, framed and hung a new photograph, and changed the bed over to flannel sheets for the winter, today. I replaced the bedroom and dining room furniture this summer and am sleeping better as a result and getting more use out of the dining room than at any time since Jane died. My share of the furniture my father built arrived this summer as well, necessitating some revision of the layout in three rooms. Now if I could just get the cellar and garage cleaned out before the snow flies... I lost two NET cancer patients this summer who had become good friends--and have four others who are in varying degrees of significant trouble. It underlines for me that someone needs to be doing what I'm doing: raising awareness, raising money for research, and working as a patient advocate when it is needful. At the risk of being political, it has also underlined for me how desperately we need a real national health program. The things these folks go through financially and emotionally at the hands of insurance companies is heartbreaking. What I'm trying to say is that we all need to have work in front of us that has value. It doesn't make the pain any better, really, but it does create a constructive place for all that pent up hurt to go and provides a kind of respite where we can get out of ourselves and our needs for some hours at a time. I felt useless for so long after Jane died. Yes, I was doing some things that mattered, but I wasn't doing them particularly well by my standards. I'm still not running on all cylinders--on a good day maybe half are working at all--but it turns out even if you are moving just one grain of sand at a time, if you keep at it long enough and doggedly enough, eventually you can move a large quantity of sand. Tomorrow, we'll raise about $2500. It's not a lot measured against what will get raised in October for breast cancer--but it's $2500 more than we had before and will bring us to about $5000 for the last two months. And we've got a new drug getting approved next month that will buy some people some more time while we figure out how this particular cancer works so that maybe--someday--we'll find a cure and they'll get to watch their kids grow up to be adults. And we helped fund a new genetic study that turned up some really strange bits about this cancer that explain why this isn't like any of the cancers we've got even the beginnings of a handle on. So, yeah, some positive things are happening. And they warm my healing heart. Pax et lux, Harry

I arrived here a few moments ago largely by accident. What a pleasant surprise to discover this topic is not only still here, but pinned to the top of the page. I had hoped people would find it useful--and it seems people have--a nice positive thought on a day that has had more than a few difficulties in it. I'm not here much anymore--actually it's likely been nearly a year since my last visit. My wife's death, nearly six years ago, still feels fresh as the day it happened much of the time. But I have meaningful work every day that needs doing. I now chair a fundraising effort at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston that is working to raise money for research into the fundamental processes of the cancer that killed my wife--we are years from a cure, but that research is where a cure will come from. I continue as CEO of the non-profit I set up for the same purpose after Jane's death. I've undertaken some huge landscaping projects, gotten back into serious photography, walk regularly, and do what I can to help others. Eventually, I'll get a book written--maybe two or three--including the one on grief I started last December which threw me into a tailspin that took months to recover from. I taught journalism in a summer program this summer with an old friend, saw some plays, learned to laugh again. My life will never be the same--but then that is sometimes the point of being alive. Everything that happens changes us--and loss changes us more than nearly anything else. Losing your spouse not a good thing--it's the worst thing I've ever experienced. Whatever higher powers exist have a great deal to answer for. But I'm not done yet. Sometimes that's not a good thing. Sometimes it's not a bad thing. We can only keep moving forward or stand still and look backward. I prefer the former to the latter, though there are days all I can do is look back and wish for something different. I walked 26.2 miles last Sunday. The sun was out. My legs felt good and my mind became still. I listened to friends and strangers talking as we went along. I felt the world coming almost into balance for a little time. Afterward, I got off the bus, hobbled to my car, drove back to the hotel and slept well for the first time in months. Today, it is raining and raw. I'm still recovering, physically. But the wind is rising in my heart and in my mind. And perhaps, in another year or five or ten, I will sleep well every night. Until then, I'll keep looking for the positive moments that let me truly be alive. I don't have the time or inclination to wait for Death or wait for Life. I'm busy living--as Jane was, even to the last. Pax et lux, Harry

At last this morning, I found my camera and time in concert. Here is what the topiary looks like at this point. --Harry

Thank you all for your kind words. Anne, I'll try to post an updated picture once I finish a project I have in hand this weekend. Harry

Dear Friends, Jane would have been 61 today. She would have awakened to cards and flowers and gifts and a poem and breakfast in bed. Later, we would have driven to southern NH to look for Christmas presents and browse the shops. We’d have had lunch in a restaurant we stopped at whenever we were there, then travelled home for a quiet night snuggled on the couch. Instead, I went to the cemetery where her body is buried this morning. I left some mums there and a card and some tears. I was angry when I left—and sad. Five years is a long time to be in mourning. Five years is no time at all to be in mourning. I’ve lived alone a long time, slept alone a long time, cooked and eaten meals alone a long time. This weekend, I started cleaning out the basement. It is where I have stored the things I am not ready to part with. Yesterday, I took the collages of our life together off the walls in the living room and moved them into the guest room. In a few days, I will unpack the suitcase she took with her to the hospital five years ago. It is filled with the clothes she never wore and the clothes she was wearing the day we checked her in for her heart surgery. I don’t know why it is suddenly time to do those things—just that it is. Jane was born 61 years ago today. Five years ago, she celebrated her birth in a hospital room in cardiac intensive care. She told the doctors and nurses she had gotten a new heart for her birthday, even though all she really had were two new mechanical valves in the right side of her heart. The plan was for her to move to the step-down unit the next day. she was happier and moe upbeat than I had seen her in months. I should have known... That night, she had her first carcinoid crisis. her blood oxygen levels fell into the mid-80s, her blood pressure dropped. The doctors and nurses decided she needed a CT scan. But the scanner in the building had closed for the night. The closest one was in a nearby building on the eighth floor. Jane declared she was ready for a road trip—and off they went. The scan was inconclusive. Her oxygen numbers came up once she was back on oxygen. Her blood pressure stabilized. I stayed up with her all night and all day the next day. She was weaker than she had been, but she seemed to have turned the corner. I went back to the hotel and slept for six hours, checked out and moved my car to the hospital. I expected to drive home that night. I did not sleep at home again until after Jane died three weeks later. Five years later, my heart still bleeds. I get up every morning, I make the bed, eat, do all the necessary things from showering and shopping to reading and writing. Sometimes, as I work on this or that project I can almost forget that Jane no longer breathes, almost forget she is not simply out with her sister. Then I look up and know she is not there—that her body rests three miles away beneath her family headstone. And then the silence closes in and it is as if she died just moments ago.I debate moving periodically in the hope that some new place will not be so haunting. And then I remember my trips to Seattle since her death, I remember the nights I’ve spent in hotel rooms on one trip or another, I remember being at parties or dinners where the silence comes rolling in—and I know that where I live will not change this grief--that to leave here will only cut me off from the small joys of our life together here—only deepen my grief. I remember a friend who lost her father when we were still in junior high school. I remember visiting her home perhaps four years after his death. There may have been some pictures of her father in her mother’s bedroom—or in her own. There were no pictures in the public sections of the house. They did not surround themselves with memories. The house evolved. Perhaps that is what I am doing this week. Perhaps I am evolving toward some final acceptance that Jane is gone and that my life needs to be about more than her absence—and about something more than the cancer that killed her. Not that I have not done things other than deal with her death and her cancer over the last five years. But whether working in the garden, reading a novel or a biography, listening to music, or going out to dinner, a play, or just for a cup of coffee with friends, those things are never far from my thoughts. Nor will I give up the work against her cancer—I know too many people who have become friends who have NET cancer to walk away from that fight in mid-stream. It will die and I will have a hand—as big a hand as I can manage—in its demise. I owe that not only to Jane and the doctors who worked with her, but to every patient whose life has touched mine in the last five years. I have no illusions: I will grieve Jane’s death until the last instant of my life. But I need to define myself as more than the grieving husband—the grieving soulmate. The months from August to December have always been hard since Jane’s diagnosis and death. Every day holds a new trigger for grief. And this year their power is greater than ever before. The tears have come daily for the last week. My mind reels from memory to memory. Yet, in a part of my soul, I know that I am letting go of Jane in a way I have not done until now. I know she is reborn in a new body that does not remember the life we shared together, that is preparing for the new work before her. And I still have work of my own to do. It is work shaped by the work we had together, shaped by our lives and our deaths—and especially her death in this lifetime. I have pressed forward with that work despite her death and my grief, but my grief has kept me from doing the best I am capable of. I have moved forward but I cannot truly move forward until I come to terms with the fact she is dead—that I will never hear her voice again or feel her in my arms. I know it in my head but my heart has refused to listen. Or maybe it has.Beginning to clear out the basement was not a conscious decision. I went down to put the laundry in the washing machine and, having done that, started cleaning. Taking her pictures down in the living room was not a conscious decision—I saw a way to make the room work a little better by moving three pieces of furniture. When I was done, the collages felt too big for where they were. I took them down and moved them to the guest room without thinking about it more than what it took to do it. This morning, I knew it was time to unpack that suitcase—but it is in a closet I can’t easily get at. Once I can, the die is cast.Some time back, I wrote a piece about a topiary heart Jane had grown after we were married. It was the only plant that died while we were in the hospital. I discovered another ivy that had somehow survived the neglect that month in another pot. I salvaged the heart form and began a new topiary. This week the sprouts completed the form. The heart is but a single strand thick and not nearly as full and strong as it was—but there. My own heart seems in similar shape—returned from the dead and knitting together, though still far from what it was. If the heart is healed, can the soul be far behind? Peace,Harry

Pretty much, QM.

Congratulations Anne. And glad to hear the surgery went well, Mary. --Harry

Precisely, Kay. Harry

Dear friends, I went to the cemetery yesterday morning. I go there every Saturday, usually in the morning. Jane and I went there most Saturday mornings when she was alive. We went to her mother's grave. Her mother always liked to hear people talking, so we would talk there. It was always quiet. We would water the flowers we took there. We would water the flowers on other nearby graves if they looked dry, pick up the vases and pots that had fallen over in the wind. We did not stay long on any given day--and less on days when it was cold or rainy. Her mother, Jane would say, would understand. Some day this week, the engraver came through. He incised the date of Jane's father's death on the stone and added the date of Jane's death at the same time. It's been nearly five years since Jane died--and I kept forgetting to have the date of her death put on the stone. Her sister suggested we do it when her father died. I admit that I've avoided doing that--not so much consciously as subconsciously. Nearly five years of weekly visits, nearly five years of visits on the tenth of each month, nearly five years of visits on her birthday, on our anniversary, on Valentine's Day--on all the small dates of remembrance that make up the memories of a marriage--and I have not yet really come to terms with her death. I saw those words on her grave yesterday and I cried. Once again, I was back on the day she died, on the day we buried her, on the day she was diagnosed, in the waiting room of the hospital on the day she was operated on, in her room during the onset of each of the carcinoid attacks and comas, and holding her hand through that long last day when there was no longer any hope. I visited my sister-in-law afterward. She said she thought this would finally give me closure--finally let me accept Jane's death and move on with my life. Part of me hopes she is right. I'd love to stop crying out of nowhere; I'd love to stop having days where I wander aimlessly from room to room thinking I need to do the laundry, vacuum the floors, write this letter, draft that article. Then I look up and the day is gone and nothing is done. But I also know she is wrong. I know too many people who have suffered this kind of loss. One of my neighbors lost her husband more than 15 years ago. The tears still hit her. The aimless days still come. It still hurts. Nothing cures this. There are only things that mask the symptoms for a time. There are only coping mechanisms we get better at employing over time. Sometimes, Jane and I would look at the words on the other stones in our little section of the cemetery. We would note the spouses who were still alive and those who weren't, how long they had gone on without their other half. Some were gone in a year or two. Others lived for decades. We wondered how they endured that much time. Neither of us could imagine losing the other. And then, I had not just to imagine it, but live it. I keep looking for words--and there are none. One moment, you are sitting in a room holding her limp but living hand. The next, there is a catch in her breathing and you are holding a hand that has no soul attached to it. You are alone in a way that cannot be described--only experienced. And it is an experience you would not wish on anyone. A wife or a husband is the family member you choose to give absolute and unconditional love to. When you are hurt, they nurture you; when they are are hurt, you nurture them; and there are no questions asked in those hours of need. There is no birth connection there--only a conscious decision that you will share your lives with each other, no matter what comes. And then death comes for one or the other of you--and no words can console the survivor; no physical or emotional gesture changes any of that vast emptiness. It is a pain so great and so deep that often, at the moment it happens, you feel nothing at all. Only months later, when everyone else has gone back to their lives, does the real pain begin. You face that, as you faced the moment of death, alone--alone in ways that cannot be described, only experienced. The words on the head stone that describe the date of Jane's death may signal closure for her sister. If they do, I am glad for her. For me, they are only another reminder--like the emptiness in the soul of this house--of all that I have lost. They are words--and nothing more. Peace, Harry

Thank you all. We lost Jane's mother nine years ago today. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, Hank died about 5:45 this evening. Gail and I were both there when he passed. It was over very quickly when it came.Fae, we brought in hospice on Friday. The nursing people were wonderful. But it is exhausting even with the amazing support they gave us. --Harry

Dear friends, The 57 month anniversary of Jane’s death was last Thursday. I’ve had little time to reflect on that because her father’s health has taken a significant urn for the worse. As I write this, he is on his death bed just a few feet away. It is 5:50 a.m. and Gail, his other daughter, is sleeping. I slept for a few hours earlier. The medicines he is on to keep him comfortable have to be given every hour, so one of us has to be awake at all times. How long this death will take, neither of us knows. But he is seemingly comfortable and, at this stage, that is all that matters. Jane’s dad was sick long before we discovered Jane’s NET cancer. Kidney problems are easy to spot with the standard blood tests everyone gets with every routine physical. It was a bigger struggle to get him to accept dialysis than it was to discover that he required it. Dialysis is an exhausting experience, but it does clean out the toxins in the blood pretty well. While Hank’s life the last six years has not been perfect, the quality of it, until recently, has been decent. He was able to get out of the house, go to cookouts, watch football—most of the normal things people do. Unfortunately, Hank was done in by another medical failure. Apparently, we stop testing for prostate cancer in older men at some point. The thinking, they tell me, is that prostate cancer generally moves very slowly in the elderly. In Hank’s case, that meant the cancer had spread to his bones before it was detected. The last year has not been good. He has been in and out of the hospital, in and out of rehab, and the quality of his life has steadily declined. Last Tuesday, Gail called 911 when he had become increasingly confused and lethargic. We expected he was dehydrated—the weather was hot and humid and there is no way to pump enough liquids and electrolytes into a person in Hank’s general condition orally. But that was not the problem. The vital organs in his body had begun to shut down. We moved him into hospice care Thursday and brought him home Friday afternoon. He was already asleep most of the time—waking up only when we changed his bed clothes. Since late Saturday night he has not opened his eyes. We wet his lips, give him his medications, and sit with him. We talk to him—we can’t know how much registers. But I think that while the porch light is on, there is not much of him left at home. Jane’s death was similar at the end. She went into that final coma and slowly drifted away. The difference was she did so in a hospital room. I would have liked to have brought her home to die, but she might not have made it there had I tried—and I did not want her to die in an ambulance surrounded by strangers. I’ve spent the last few days thinking about Jane and her parent’s house. I have stood by the fence outside where I first told her I loved her, stood in the hallway where I kissed her good night after a date, sat in the dining room where we ate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinner—as well as a host of Sundays. I have stood under the grape arbor where we once sat and inhaled their late summer perfume. That scent is there this week as we wait for Hank’s death. It will close the book on so many memories in a way I can’t quite describe. We forget sometimes that medicine is not an exact science. A test not given, a series of diverse symptoms not recognized as part of a larger pattern, a specialist’s rather than a generalist’s view of things—by such little things all our lives hang like the grapes on that arbor. We don’t know when a particular grape will be fully ripe, when a particular leaf will fall—when a specific life will end. Jane’s mother died nine years ago tomorrow. I thought of the irony of that last week. That Hank should die on the same day as his wife has powerful symmetry to it, but I kept it to myself at the time. Gail raised the idea this morning and I agreed with her. I feel uncomfortable intruding on her grief. In a few minutes, I will dip a fresh DenTip—a tiny sponge at the end of a long plastic stick—in water, cleanse Hank’s mouth and then give him his next bit of medicine. I’ll note the slight change in the sound of his breathing, and continue to wait—as I waited with Jane during her mother’s last hours, nine years ago, as I waited for Jane’s death 57 months and four days ago. And when the waiting is ended, Death and I will become full adversaries again. I understand the cycle of life and death—of birth and rebirth. I know even the stars have expiration dates. But I am very much a disciple of John Donne: Every person's death diminishes me, for I am involved with humankind. For now, Henry is dying. I will do what I can to make him comfortable as he waits like a grape to be plucked from the vine. Peace,Harry Hank died about 5:45 this evening. Gail and I were both there when he passed. It was over very quickly when it came.--Harry

Dear friends, Hank is home and resting relatively comfortably. I've had my refresher course on giving meds and changing soiled adult diapers. This is, however, not going to be pretty. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I am exhausted, so this will be brief. We did not bring Hank home today. Gail fell this morning and managed to break a bone in her heel. Getting that straightened out took much of the day--and by then it was really too late to get anything done. She is supposed to stay off that foot for the next 6-8 weeks. We will see an orthopedist early on Monday for a fuller diagnosis and treatment plan. Under the circumstances, I will be spending most of my time after tomorrow taking care of the two of them. I will be without internet access there, so I am not sure when I will be able to post anything further. We did tell Jane's dad what is going on and that we plan to get him home. He continues to weaken and is lucid for shorter and shorter periods of time. I do not think he will live long once we get him home--but one never knows. Thank you all for you thoughts and prayers.

Dear friends, Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Gail and I spent the day with Hank. He seems both somewhat weaker today than he was yesterday and significantly more mentally confused and lost. We spent much of the afternoon talking with four different doctors, including the hospitalist and each of the specialists involved with Jane's dad's case.We also spoke with a social worker and representatives of two different hospice groups as potential managers for his end of life care. Gail also talked this morning with the nurse who supervises her dad's dialysis sessions. Given those conversations and the significant decline in Hank's condition in the last 2-3 days, we are ending his dialysis treatments. His quality of life has declined below the level that he would have any interest in continuing his life. He was already on a DNR and had made clear to both Gail and me where the line was beyond which he would want treatment to end. Tomorrow, we will pick a hospice group and make arrangements for him to come home so he can die in familiar surroundings in as much comfort as we can provide him. As most of you know, Henry was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer last year that had spread to his bones. Those metastases have spread well into his rib-cage according to the CAT scan done last night. He has been on a hormone treatment for this for nearly a year--which is about the time-frame the oncologist here thought it would work, given how far it had already spread at the time of diagnosis. The doctors assured us today that death from renal failure--he is end-stage there as well--will be a much easer death than waiting for the bone cancer to claim him. They tell us ending dialysis will result in him sleeping more and more until he simply drifts away. How long that death will take is unclear. Estimates range from a few days to a month at the outside. As I said yesterday--and this was reinforced today by what the doctors said to us--his body appears to be shutting down. It's been fighting a myriad of problems for many years and seems finally to be saying it has had enough. I like the man--and will miss him. Pax et lux, Harry

Dear friends, Jane's dad has been admitted to the hospital. The news is not good. Essentially, it looks like his body is shutting down and we are looking at days to weeks. He is mentally confused--thinks Jane is still alive, doesn't always recognize Gail and is not always sure of his own name. We are meeting with the doctors at the hospital tomorrow morning to talk about palliative care and hospice. Tthey plan to run a few more tests tomorrow to confirm what they think is going on. As I know more, I'll let you know. Give your loved ones an extra hug the next few days. Be well, all of you. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, A "real" marriage is an insanely difficult thing to try to explain to someone who has not experienced it. I was reminded of that last week as I worked my way through one of the books in The Outlander series currently being serialized on television. Late in the fourth book, one of the characters describes the difference between a real marriage and one based on obligation. The difference isn't pretty. But the character misses the point. She sees a real marriage as involving only a romantic kind of love. Her mother points out that real love creates obligations--and that obligations are just as important to a sound marriage as romance is. But even she does not entirely get what marriage is about--or at least she doesn't manage to explain it very clearly. In some respects, I don't think we can truly understand marriage until one member of the bonded pair has died. Jane and I had a good marriage. We were each other's other half. We understood romance. We understood partnership. We understood love and the obligations to each other love creates. Then Jane got sick and we faced that the way we faced everything else in our lives--together. And then she died and I discovered an entire piece of marriage I had not conceived of before--and that I don't think she had either. Love does not die when one of the partners ceases to be. Rather, at least for the one who still lives, it continues. It shapes who we are and who we become. It colors our perception of every subsequent experience. And it makes us a special kind of crazy. Today is our 26th anniversary--the fifth since Jane's death in December of 2010. Intellectually, five years is a long time ago. But emotionally, it feels like mere minutes. We both knew there was a good chance that day would be the last anniversary we would truly celebrate together. Seven days later we would make our first trip to Boston to see an oncologist specializing in Jane's unique form of cancer. We knew we were in trouble. But we tried to pretend for each other that day that nothing was different--that we still had years ahead of us. We both failed badly in those attempts. We went out for lunch. Jane tried to eat--and couldn't. We tried to walk more than the distance to the car, and Jane couldn't. Every failure hurt her. Every failure hurt us both. But we kept smiling and kept trying. We had neither of us slept well for a long time. I have not slept well for a long time. Her slow decline into death haunts my dreams. Her rasping voice in the last days of her time in the hospital haunts my waking hours. It is the only version of her voice I can still hear--and I suspect I will hear it until I die. And perhaps I will hear it even then. We made that last anniversary as normal as we could. We exchanged gifts and cards when we woke up. She read my anniversary poem. I fixed us our traditional anniversary breakfast of chocolate croissants and tea. We talked about our hopes and dreams for the year ahead. Jane never asked me for a particular present for our anniversary until the last one. She had seen a sterling silver bracelet on a leather band. The bracelet framed a single word: "Believe." It was a message to us both. It is the one piece of her jewelry I have never put away. It sits on a mirror on a bookcase in the living room, amid our own glass menagerie. It sits between Jane's Pegasus and my dragon--the symbols we had adopted for ourselves long before we met. Behind it stand three glass unicorns, pawing the air as they prepare to gallop. To the right is a tiny glass beaker, to the left, a small royal swan. Every piece held meaning for us--every piece still has meaning for me. Every day, I remind myself, I yet have work to do in the world. And every day, I miss her. I miss the shared goals, the shared dreams, the shared aspirations--shared in a way they cannot be shared now. And some days, it is all just too much. I want to stay in bed and stare at the ceiling. But I can't. And I won't. Jane won't let me--and neither will I. That's not to say I don't take time to cry when I need to, take a day to sit by the ocean and watch the waves come in or climb to the top of some hill or mountain and sit and watch the sky. But Jane told me I could not stop doing the work just because she was no longer there to do it with me. We both had dreams. It is left to me to make them real. Peace, Harry