Earlier this year, shortly after Bob was diagnosed, I cleaned up our spare room so he would have a place to relax away from the kids. We had a recliner in there so he could either lay flatter or sit up more. We didn’t know how any of the chemo was going to make him feel so we figured that would be best. Some nights he’d sleep in there and others in our bed. Slowly the spare room was used less and less and it started to become our dumping spot of stuff we would eventually get to. Well, eventually is here. I can’t even walk into the room anymore so I figured it was time to sort through it. The kids also have all of their books in there along with their puzzles and some of their toys so everytime they wanted something from that room I would have to climb over everything to get to it. Also, I forgot to mention that our light in there doesn’t work (we meant to get it fixed but it wasn’t a priority), so if they want something and it’s dark outside I have to use a flashlight to go in there to get it. It’s quite annoying.
My 4 year old is with grandma today so while my 2 year old was napping I decided to try and clean up in there a little. It all started off bad. First things I see are all the photos we had at the funeral home, albums, poster boards and a few framed ones. The framed ones I’ve been meaning to get hung up but I’m afraid I’ll put a big hole in the wall, that was always Bob’s job. So after moving those aside I see all of the items from the hospital and other medical things. I start going through all of the papers he wrote on those last few days before he died and I just sat there crying while reading them. I remembered everything that was happening at that time in the hospital. It’s amazing how well you can remember every detail just based on one sentence of Bob’s you read. There was so much that he said that last night that we didn’t write down but one of the things I did write down that I forgot about was that he said, “The Holy Spirit will guide you and all those around you, things will fall into place and Chief Belmar himself said the department has this.” I think I felt every emotion and just cried even more. I know all of those things are true and the department has been amazing. It’s also amazing to me that my husband was dying and was able to tell me this. He knew where he was going and he was at peace. That entire night before he died we read from this prayer book he picked up at our church called The 4 Keys To Heaven, Mary’s Call. He wanted me to remember the one on page 51 called, Safely Home, and read it to myself every night and eventually to the kids. I completely forgot he told me that until today when I was reading those papers. From this night on I will be reading this to myself so thought I’d share it with you all.