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We lost both of my husband's parents in the month of September. He was an only child, so it was the two of us left to deal with everything. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Robert was a child of the Great Depression. He was the older son, the second of five children in a farm family near Chanute, KS. When World War II began, his younger brother immediately enlisted, so the local draft board told him to stay at home to work the farm for his father. He did, for three years, then decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps. During basic training, he earned the title of sharpshooter, but he'd been one for far longer. Bob was never stationed outside of the United States during his two-year enlistment, but he had some stories to tell of that time (and a few we wish he'd told, from the pictures we've found).
Doris was a child of the Depression, as well, but her life was different. She was the oldest of three girls, born to an oil wildcatter and his wife. "Cook" never left the lifestyle of the wildcatter, despite marriage and fatherhood. He would drink away his pay check on payday if his wife didn't get it from him first. Her method? Send little Doris into the bar to get his wallet out of his pocket. Why? Because it wouldn't hurt a child's reputation to walk into the bar, while her mother could be assured of being the subject of gossip had she done so. One of her mother's strictures, almost unheard of at the time, was that all three girls went to the dentist on a regular basis, so that they could have good teeth. It sounds very cold, but she recognized that the only way any of them could hope to escape small-town poverty was to marry well. It was up to her to assure that they would be able to do so. The pictures of the three girls as children and as teenagers show beautiful young women, and all three chose men to marry who treated them with dignity and love, so their mother was right.
One of the constant small arguments between Bob & Doris through the years was whose childhood was more difficult. His family truly had nothing but the land they worked and the clothes on their backs. If the crop didn't come in, they didn't have anything to eat unless they could hunt it. Hers had more money, but only if it wasn't drunk up. We never could get either of them to see the other's point of view on it. Each thought the other was a little to eager to claim the title of "worse off".
After the war, each went to college. Bob attended Chanute Junior College (now Neosho County Community College) then Kansas State College in Manhattan, KS (now Kansas State University, Go Wildcats!). Doris attended first Phillips University in Bartlesville, OK, and then Southwest College in Winfield, KS. She had a strong love for children and a strong desire to teach. After graduating from Southwest, the first person in either of her families to attain a college degree, she received her teaching certificate and taught school for a year. Then, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and her year-long nightmare began.
After attending KSC for a year, Bob moved to Wichita and joined the aircraft industry. From the mid- 1950's through the mid-1980's, he would work as a machinist and troubleshooter for the tooling groups at all of the aircraft manufacturers, with most of that time spent at Boeing. Ironically, for all his work spent in the industry, he never flew on a commercial jet, something I had hoped to change.
Doris was sent by a judge to live in a sanatarium in Norton, KS, for treatment for TB. For those who don't know, in the 1950's, the diagnosis of TB in a young woman was essentially considered a moral failing, that the only way a woman would contract such a disease was by engaging in activities unsuitable for a woman of good character. She refused to discuss with anyone what was done to her at the sanatarium, but she lived with the mental effects for the rest of her life. From the time she was released, she could never sleep in a room with a closed door. If someone closed the door while she was sleeping, it wouldn't take long before she would rouse and be terrified. My husband remembers as a young child hearing her start screaming because the bedroom door blew closed in the night, and he would run over and open it so that she could not be scared. There is much that those who tortured her for that year have to answer for in the next world.
When Doris was released from the sanatarium, she moved back to the small town of her birth. Both of her sisters had married, and the middle sister had bought a small house behind her own home where Doris lived for a number of years. Doris helped to raise her sisters' children and worked at the Binney & Smith factory in the office for a number of years.
In May, 1962, Doris went camping at Salt Plains, KS, with her sister and her family. It was Bob's birthday, and friends had taken him out to dinner in Udall, KS, then drove over to Salt Plains to see another friend who worked in the aircraft plant with them. Bob later wrote that meeting Doris was like receiving a birthday present from God. He quickly began to court her, and they were married in April, 1963. He bought a house in Oxford, KS, where she lived, the house where they would spend their entire married life.
Both of them wanted children. A son was born in January, 1964, who only survived a few hours after birth, due to problems with the umbilical cord. They were both devastated by their loss, as they both knew that at their respective ages, time was running short to have children. In May, 1965, however, they were blessed with another son, my husband. The doctor told Doris that it would be safe to attempt to have another child, but it wasn't to be. Instead, they doted on a their little boy, and on Doris' nieces.
Life was good for them. Bob continued to work in the aircraft industry, and Doris got licensed as a para-professional educator and worked at the local school. Their son grew up in a loving home, surrounded by "girl cousins" who thought the little boy was the best thing ever to play with. Every year in August, when the aircraft factories shut down for two weeks, they loaded into a camper of some sort and went to southern Colorado for vacation. Every few years, when the union went out on strike from the factory, Bob went out until the family budget felt the pinch, then he would go back, because he had made a commitment to his wife and son that he would always take care of them.
The years sped along. Their son graduated from high school and went off to college at Kansas State University. I met them for the first time in 1992, when they welcomed me for Easter. My husband & I got married in June, 1993. More loving, supportive people do not exist in the world, I am convinced.
In 1997, my mother-in-law recovered her eyesight, thanks to cataract surgery and cornea transplants in both eyes. Her world was given color again, something she hadn't had for close to 15 years. My father-in-law twice battled cancer, first prostate cancer in 1992, then breast cancer in 1995.
Over all this time, there were a few constants in their lives. Their families. Both were close to their respective siblings. Their church. Doris taught Sunday School for about 50 years, while Bob was a stalwart on the church board who spent many years as the treasurer. There were few things as important to them as their commitment to the little country church they attended.
Politically, neither was a demonstrative person. Bob was an Alf Landon Republican, while Doris was a New Deal Democrat. She gave to "bodily autonomy" causes, as she called them, while he was a lifetime member of the NRA who collected firearms and refinished them. She often commented that they canceled each other out when they voted, to which he only nodded and smiled. He was quite unhappy with the takeover of the Republican party by the far-right and neo-conservatives.
In 2000, our world shifted for the first time. Shortly after Thanksgiving, she lost control over one side of her face, along with losing the ability to tie her shoes. Doris had had a stroke. Close on the heels of the stroke came the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Bob took care of his gift from God for 11 months, until it was finally to much for him. The week of Thanksgiving, 2001, we placed her in the local nursing home. It was then Bob first joked that my superpower was my ability to cut through paperwork, due to the stack of forms that had to be dealt with that I was able to turn into something manageable. He readily admitted that had he been left to deal with the forms, he would have put Doris back in the car and taken her home.
For the first five years, Bob visited every day. In June, 2002, he suffered a stroke that left him with nerves that confused hot and cold in his left hand. In January, 2005, he had to have a finger on his right hand amputated due to the effects of radiation on the bone and surrounding tissue.
One of my concerns about Bob for the last few years had been that when Doris died that we would lose him shortly after. He was gradually withdrawing from the world, due to pain issues related to arthritis in his neck and upper back. In 2003, he started going to the VA for his long-term medications. They said that his blood pressure was around 180/120, when everywhere else was showing it as 120/80. They insisted that he take medication for it.
In August, it became obvious that Doris had begun to make the final slide. We had to argue with her doctor, but we got her into hospice care, partly to assure that someone was checking on Bob on a regular basis.
In early September, we got a call from Bob to tell us he was in the hospital. He'd ridden a float to celebrate the achievements of local veterans in his town's parade. When he got home, he couldn't walk from his pickup into the house, as he was out of breath. He called a neighbor, who called the First Responders. They got him started on oxygen and called the ambulance. His doctor assured us that we didn't need to come down, that they believed they could get his blood pressure back up from the 70/30 it had been when he came in. On September 9, we were told that they were going to transfer him to Wichita to begin cardiac rehab later in the week. I made arrangements to take off that Friday, to help with the paperwork that the move would undoubtedly require.
In the early hours of Wednesday, September 10, my husband answered the phone to hear from the doctor that Bob's heart had given out, and all efforts to resuscitate him had failed. (I'm writing this just before Thanksgiving, and it brings tears to my eyes to write it.) It began raining in town shortly after his death and literally did not stop until Saturday morning about an hour prior to his funeral.
We made all the arrangements. Bob had a special friendship with the minister of his church, and the funeral that Danny led was beautiful. Bob was buried in the local cemetery. We could have asked for full military honors, but we decided that simpler would be better, as was his habit. We have the flag that draped his coffin in our possession.
We knew that if there were any justice in the universe, we would go through it all again soon. For Doris' sake, we hoped that we would. True to form, she finally let go of this life on September 29, nineteen days after Bob's death. As one of their friends said, it was so like them, that he had to go a few steps ahead and make sure everything was ready and safe for her. Once again, we made all the arrangements, this time more lavish. To honor her love of color, and to honor her regaining her color vision in 1997, we asked that all flowers be in bright pinks, purples & blues. She loved the bagpipes, so we played "Amazing Grace" on the pipes. That day was her rebirth and uncloudy day, so we included "Morning Has Broken" by the Irish Tenors and "Uncloudy Day" by the Jolly Rogers, as well. I've been told that the music I selected was absolutely perfect.
One of my husband's cousins asked me why I didn't cry at her funeral. Frankly, I'd shed my tears over the loss of this wonderful woman for the last eight years, over the course of her decline. She was finally released from the suffering associated with the hateful disease.
I honestly feel like my life fell apart in September, and I'm still working on putting it back together. My work has suffered; thankfully, I have a very understanding boss. I spent the nineteen days between their deaths having nightmares. I get distracted far more easily. Each day gets a bit easier, but only a little. My husband said after his father's funeral that he didn't want to have make any decisions for a while, because even deciding what to have for dinner seemed like to much work. I've taken over making as many of the day-to-day decisions as I can. As much as I hurt, I know that it is worse for him.
The upside of my husband being an only child was that there was no one to argue with the arrangements we made. The downside is that there is no one else to take the burden of dealing with the home they lived in for 45 years. We're not sure how long it will take us to go through everything. Every box has to be touched; every drawer has to be explored; every closet has to be excavated. Bob & Doris were the repositories for photographs for both of their families, since Bob bought his first camera at the age of 12 and was forever taking pictures. We've found photographs and letters in cigar boxes and pencil boxes. We found a family bible with pictures dating back to the 1870's.
My understanding is that it isn't unusual that couples who have been soulmates go together. MSNBC's health section had a long article about it not longer after we lost my husband's parents. A friend found it & sent it to me. It made me tear up, but in a good way.
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