Precious Memories

PRECIOUS MEMORIES

By Robert Allen

                Outside the weeks stampeded by like a Pony Express courier.  Inside, the moments resembled a Conestoga wagon creeping along with axle squeaking.  Seven weeks from diagnosis to demise.  Back in Minnesota, where somewhat ironically I was directing “Much Ado About Nothing,’ time ran on the Pony Express schedule.  In Montana, time slowed to the pace of plodding oxen.  The trips between the two time zones carried me to my boyhood home while simultaneously subjecting me to the jarring juxtaposition of a seemingly endless time travel, weightless time in a rapidly spinning universe.

            My brother David had been the first to notice, after some prompting from Cindy over her concerns.  Following Dad on a short jaunt into Billings, the inability of a careful driver to stay in his lane caused concern.  After all, the folks faced several scheduled weeks of travel, preaching in Prophecy Conferences from Montana to Ohio and back.  Crossing the white line on a four lane highway deserved an eye exam if nothing else.  The nothing else, upon examination, became a fast growing brain tumor.  The trip canceled, David informed my sisters and me of the results.

            Initially the evidence of growing pressure on the brain seemed almost light-hearted.  Night time trips to the bathroom involved concentration on motor skills.  Dad’s solution involved remembrance of language challenges he and Mom had enjoyed on a mission trip to the Far East.  English speakers with the inability to pronounce the “r” sound came to mind as his feet manipulated the familiar hallway.  “Left, light.  Left, light.  Left, light.”  Days in the armchair included memoirs written for Reader’s Digest.  Cursive which had always resembled a medical doctor’s writing more than a doctor of Divinity, declined rapidly into the unintelligible.  All the time Dad kept assuring Mom that the rapidly filling legal pads contained precious memories long forgotten from a childhood in Iowa.

            Far too soon for any of us, Hospice arrived to alert us to the signs of an unavoidable and rapidly impending death.  Visits to the hospital, complete with elevator rides where Dad asked strangers if they were ready to go “all the way to the top,” had produced a uniform prescription.  “Keep him comfortable at home and use meds to deal with the pain.”

            The nights were the hardest.  Mom would sit beside the hospital bed which had been placed in the living room and hold his hands or rub his increasingly cold feet.  Eventually Dorothy would be able to convince her to get some rest, restless but necessary.  After one of those difficult nights Mom shared through her tears that she had been able to release him, not to the inevitable, but to the will of a loving Father.  He had woken during the night and asked Dorothy to find Mom.  They shared

            On that last difficult evening we gathered around his bed, waiting for the arrival of Peggy from Indiana.  David planned to drive to the airport in Billings to meet her, but his best friend Glen insisted on making the trip for him.  We all knew the endless would soon be endless no longer.

            We sang. 

            “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins,

            And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”

            Dad’s favorite.

            We read.  Dorothy would open his Bible and hand it to me or to David, unable to trust her own voice. 

            “Behold, I show you a mystery.  We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.  At the last trump.”

            Mom held his hand.  They walked together the path of memory through years of western trails, eastern travel and heavenly service.  From time to time Dad would whisper something for one of us as well.  As I leaned closer to listen late that evening I could faintly hear him say, “Good shepherd.”

            During the coming spring Dad planned to lead his 30^th tour of the Bible Lands.  Recognizing the trip would be impossible, he had asked Carmen and me to lead it for him.  The company making preparations for the trip?  Good Shepherd.  I squeezed his hand to let him know I understood.

            We tried to keep his feet warm.  We continued to sing, and read and pray.  Mom held on tight.  And then, smiling through the pain, he took his Father’s hand and ended his earthly journey.  The axle squeaked no more.

            At Dad’s funeral more than thirty preachers joined in singing “This is the day that the Lord has made.”  I shared with one of them Dad’s last words to me, “Good Shepherd” and the plans for the upcoming trip.  But Lynn just shook his head. 

            “No, Bob.  Not the trip.  Not that Good Shepherd.  Your father had just met in person the Shepherd of his soul.”

            And you know?  I think he was right.