By Jeff Orvis
I'm starting to enjoy word search
puzzles again.
Big deal, you might say. I would
ordinarily agree, but as we come up on the one-year mark since Mom
died, I was trying to come up with a way to describe how I've tried
to cope this past year. The word search puzzle books were my main
companion during that fateful month of August, 2012, as I sat by
Mom's bedside as she recovered from emergency abdominal surgery,
keeping watch as she slept trying to recover.
In the early part of the month, we had
reasons to be optimistic. We had complete faith in her surgeon and
the entire medical team at the hospital was compassionate and very
professional. Many folks who have experienced illness and surgery,
especially when the patient has observed her 80th
birthday, might have thoughts about what life will be like without
that loved one. But with her first-rate medical and spiritual teams,
we had every reason to expect her to return home quickly.
Ultimately, that was not to be. A
series of complications led to two more surgeries later in the month
and finally her body signalled it had had enough.
Every day, spend five minutes with the
TV and you can see all sorts of drama where actors depict dying
moments. I've never personally watched someone die before. While
nobody really likes the experience, I would like to think that if I'm
ever put in that situation again, I'll have a better idea of how to
react. It took more than 59 years for me to experience a death in
person. Recently, I have been reminded that Mom watched both of her
husbands die. In fact, Dad passed 32 years ago this month. My
step-dad Ernie died at home late one night several years later.
My sister has chronicled her thoughts
during Mom's final hours in her wonderfully-written blog.
The only thing I remember of those
last minutes was when Mom, who had been heavily sedated for several
days, suddenly opened her eyes and looked at me. It was not a look of
alarm, but rather a look of assurance that she knew full well that
this was just the beginning of her ultimate wonderful journey.
As we left the hospital that night,
little did I know that a new journey was just beginning for me. I had
agreed to be the executor of Mom's estate. I had no inkling of what I
was agreeing to. I have never owned a home, nor have I had any
financial investments. But I knew that being the executor was often a
duty of the oldest child and Mom had complete confidence that I would
be able to figure it out.
This journey is continuing as we try
to sell Mom's condo and settle the estate. One thing I think I did
right was enlist the help of a select number of friends and relatives
to help with this process. As a journalist, I've learned that the
only dumb question is the question not asked. So my thanks to those
members of my team for answering some dumb questions this past year!
You might think that after spending
hours working on something as simple as word search puzzles, I would
never want to see one again. But in sorting through the mountain of
paper her in the house, I came across a few books that hadn't been
completely filled in. Strangely enough, those boxes of jumbled
letters, where the object is to find a list of up to 40 words is once
again a comfort. You can lose yourself mentally in those pages for a
few minutes at a time, but can still use some compartments of your
brain to ponder other things.
Perhaps in some small way, the puzzle
books are a reminder that the days of puzzles and uncertainty and
suffering are finally over for Mom and our other loved ones who have
passed on. If you believe in God and salvation, you have a better
idea of what they mean when they say that the departed have gone on
to their reward, where they will finally learn all the answers.
