And Then it Was Over
”I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone...
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
*Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson*
This morning between 12:23 and 12:27, I lost my husband of 39 yrs.
Michael never felt he was dying even though the hospice doctor had predicted that he would not last through Christmas. We had had a conversation with the hospice nurse on Thursday. We all agreed that if he was still here after Christmas, we would repeat his blood tests to see where he was in the process. We felt that there was a good chance he would still be with us through January. Like I said, he never felt like he was dying.
After dinner and a conversation with his youngest daughter he watched some TV and played a game on his tablet. He took a bath after me. After his bath, he came barrelling into the bedroom and sat down in his reclining chair. He told me he couldn’t breath.
This time I knew it was serious. I gave him some medicine which didn’t work. I called the hospice nurse and she suggested something stronger. That too did not work.
He was in obvious distress. In a matter of 5 minutes he was gone.
I had an RN friend who lived nearby who I called. She came and checked him. She could not hear any signs of life.
When the hospice nurse arrived she also agreed that he was gone.
The coroner was called and then the Cremation Society. They picked him up around 4:30 am.
I have an appointment on Christmas Eve, with the Cremation Society, to sign the paperwork etc.
Today we lost a good man.
Michael was a man for many years who refused to tell me that he loved me.
Have you heard the Norwegian man who loved his wife so much, he almost told her? That was the joke he teased me with.
He would say he had grown fond of me. He said that there was a study that said that “fondness” was the biggest predictor of a long marriage.
This was our joke...until it wasn’t.
One day he knew that what I needed was to hear him say “I love you”. Then he was frequent and liberal with those words. I heard it often from him these the last years of his life.
But this man who was “fond” of me also knew just when he needed to write me one of his love poems. These poems were personal and full of a depth of meaning and understanding. They always made me cry.
He spent his life trying to be a better man. His life was rocky and we had a really rough road to walk together. But I stayed because I never doubted his desire to strive to just be a better person. I saw his effort.
Isn’t that a life well lived; a life spent trying to be an ever better person?
Michael lived his life strongly and so thoroughly that at death he found himself a better human being. He was the very essence of that kind of compassionate human...nothing extraneous, nothing wasted.
Just a man trying to purely walk the path in front of him.
An irreverent spiritual man. A scurrilous Monk. A man who was not afraid to cry.
A man who would help you when you down. A man who would crawl into a gutter with you, wallow there with you until you decided it was time to leave and then he would somehow help you rise out of that smelly dirty spot, help you clean up and then send you on your way.
I never doubted that if someone asked him for help that he could give, he would freely give that help. He also was not a man to dance around you with pretty words. He would tell it to you direct.
This was just a small bit of the man I had great fortune to marry. He was never an easy man to live with but he was a man who pushed me to be stronger and more resilient.
Send me off with chocolate and pistachio nuts.
Do not fill your eyes with tears. I am still with you. You have always been the better part of me. Place some of me in your favorite places because that is where I want to go.
Your joy has always been my joy.
Do not canonize me for I was no saint. When I am remembered I wish to be remembered as I was with all the faults right out there for all to see. I will need a cracked stone to lie under (only a metaphor do not waste time on looking for a flawed headstone} my favorite place was Ryumonji.
You all know the drill.
I have loved you all as well as I could and I will love you forever. I approve of every choice you make and will make.
Please do not choose to stop your life because I am gone. Please try and ring as much joy and as much good as you can out of each moment. This is how I tried to live.
You all have been and continue to be my pride and joy; own this and carry it forward as you journey on.
When it is time for me to go let me go. I do not wish to fight on under even greater challenges than I have now. If I can be restored to the life I have now, then okay I will fight to recover, but I do not think there will be much left to fight with if I am much diminished from here. So pretty much if the Doctors say but...then let me go.
There is a distinct possibility with my health and family history that my mind might fail before my body does. I do not wish to take medications to preserve a body who's mind is gone.
I have no assets other than you all to speak of or any specific desire for what goes to whom. Let things go to those that wish them, and send the rest to the thrift store of your choice.
Please love and take care of each other as you are the things I loved most in the world.
I have lived the life I wanted to and lived it as fiercely as I could.
I have made my peace with it in the end.
Fudo Michael Koppang.
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