Till Death Do Us Part: By Kathy Davis Vrbas

Today, Dec. 26, 2020, is the 45th anniversary of my marriage to Jerry Vrbas. But we won’t be observing the occasion together: Nearly four years ago, I became a widow.

Today, I look back on our wedding as if I were remembering an old movie. This anniversary is an opportunity to revisit scenes from our journey together, perhaps editing some of those scenes with a pen dipped in the ink of greater understanding that age can afford. But still clear, and not in need of any editing at all, are the memories–and the blessings–my husband gave me as he died.

Jerry and I were social outliers and maybe a little quirky in that we generally didn’t like making a fuss over things. As young people, we had intentionally chosen the day after Christmas for our simple marriage ceremony because it would lessen expectations to make a big deal out of anniversaries. On the mornings of our anniversaries, my husband, always an early riser, would greet my half-asleep, night-owl face with a statement.

“Happy anniversary,” he would say pleasantly.

“Happy anniversary,” I’d mumble back, groping for a coffee cup.

Sometimes we’d give each other cards. Maybe we’d go out to eat or maybe I’d make something special for dinner. Now and then, one of us would buy flowers for our table.

Four children eventually joined us in our farm home in the northwest corner of Kansas, where we lived 26 years. Jerry, a Navy veteran who had chosen to return to his home county following his military service, supported us with his considerable skills as a brick mason and a mechanic. I supplemented our income by working for the local newspaper. It was a lifestyle that echoed scenes from my favorite childhood books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and we relished our simple but rich experiences of raising our family in our little house on the prairie. We observed our wedding anniversaries by enjoying our children as they played with their new Christmas toys, or maybe we all built snowmen, or went for winter pasture walks together.

I never did understand women who expected their husbands to lavish them with attention–much less gifts–on wedding anniversaries. Why should it be the man’s job to perform such acts? Isn’t it his anniversary, too? Why does our culture treat that occasion as a day for the woman to feel special and the man to feel pressure?

On the last anniversary we observed together, Jerry and I took ourselves out for lunch at McDonald’s in the town 30 miles to the south of us. He ordered the two-cheeseburger meal and I had a quarter pounder. He shared his fries with me and brought me my own little cup of ketchup. It was perfect.

Perfect, except for the fact that his illness was becoming impossible for him to deny.

“What could it be?” he had begun asking me a year earlier, describing symptoms. He had thought the pain in his side was from slipping on the ice one day and hitting the car door hard as he entered. But the pain, which had gone away, had returned for no reason.

“I’m not a doctor!” I’d reply in frustration. “Let’s get some tests done and find out!”

But resistant to medical intervention due to trauma in his youth, as well as having been born with a good helping of Northwest Kansas stubbornness, he refused to seek a doctor’s opinion. Over the months, he continued to describe symptoms and ask me what they could mean. Finally I gave in to his entreaties and consulted Dr. Google.  The best I could come up with was gall bladder trouble.

“An easy fix,” I assured my husband. “Gall bladder surgery is pretty simple these days. Let’s get some testing.”

But instead of undergoing tests, my independent husband searched YouTube for gall bladder home remedies. He adopted a regimen of drinking a daily morning tonic of cider vinegar and lemon juice.

Remarkably, this treatment actually served him well for nearly a year. He experienced abatement of symptoms and surprisingly, the inveterate homebody even did some traveling to visit our kids in Washington, Colorado and Wyoming.

However, his abdominal discomfort advanced into pain that finally drove that hospital-hating man to the local facility for tests. The result shocked us both: It was liver cancer. 

We were referred immediately to a Denver specialist. The prognosis wasn’t hopeful.

“Three months,” the oncologist said.

Jerry, independent individual that he was, took the fast train and lived only two. But those months were to prove a tremendous gift to both of us.

We were practical people. He accepted his coming death with the no-nonsense stoicism that had characterized his life. I faced the time ahead of us with the resolve to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

My resolve was made tenable by the anesthesia of shock and denial, classic first-stage grief stuff. But in reality, I knew only too well what I was in for: In the past nine years, I had tended my beloved mother, my aunt, and my brother in the closing years of their lives. I had sat beside their beds and held their hands as each took that last breath.

“No! Not again, Lord! I can’t!” I pleaded in self-indulgent moments.

“Yes, again,” the Lord said. “And as always, I’ll be beside you so that you can.”

Jerry did not remember what he had said to me two years earlier after we had attended my brother Jim’s memorial service. But it had made a big impression on me at the time, as it seemed such an odd thing to say. My husband told me, “I hope I have someone with me when I die.” I thought about this as we prepared ourselves for his death. 

My younger brother, Jim, and I were only 14 months apart and had been extremely close all our lives. A career Forest Service employee, he lived his entire adult life half a continent away from me in the Pacific Northwest, the latter years in Portland, Oregon. We logged thousands of phone hours through the years. We had visited each other and reunited and traveled together with the rest of our family as often as we could manage. He was my best friend and favorite travel buddy.

As it happened, Jim and I were together, enjoying a little car tour of the Olympic Peninsula, when he decide to stop and seek help at a local hospital for disturbing pain. He came out of that emergency room with the stunning announcement that he had cancer.

Jim’s wife, though a caring person, was not equipped emotionally to manage his increasing weakness and they had no children. Over the next year or so, while Jim was treated for aggressive prostate cancer, my husband Jerry held down the fort at our Kansas home while I flew back and forth to Portland to help my brother. I was joined in these efforts by our younger sister, Jean, who flew in from the East Coast as often as she could.

When it became evident Jim needed nursing care, Jean and I helped him choose an assisted living facility and helped him move there. Frequent visits assured us he was in good hands. A year later, his condition had progressed. In an improvisational act of love, we both moved into his apartment with him to help care for him around the clock.

For three months, Jean and I slept on pads on Jim’s living room floor in order to give our brother all the attention a family couldn’t ask of nurses and aides; their hectic duties didn’t leave enough time for them to push buttons on his remote, adjust the window curtains, plump his pillows, and soothe him with conversation, deep as well as lighthearted.

The people at the assisted living facility, from administrators to aides, treated us with incredible grace, allowing us to stay with him in such an unusual manner. Over those months, they quietly looked after us, too, telling us they were surprised to see such family devotion in these times, when dying individuals often finish their lives alone, or in the company of professional strangers. But then, they didn’t know Jim like we did. Our brother was the kindest and most loving person either of his sisters had ever known. Our goal was that he would have every wish satisfied as he prepared to leave us.

Our experience in recent years with helping our mother and our aunt on their journeys had taught Jean and me the importance of including one vital step: We enlisted the services of a Hospice organization. The people who visited us through Hospice were the support system that transitioned us out of the cold, antiseptic world of tests and treatments and eased us into a time focused on comfort, peace, and meaning in each moment. With the support of Hospice, my sister and I navigated the death journey with our brother. We can honestly say to each other today that our last trip together as siblings was like taking a cruise on which we did little else but eat, talk, and watch favorite tv shows and movies from our childhoods. Yes, of course there were the hard things, the ministrations such as turning him in his bed every 10 minutes as the spreading cancer made comfort difficult to find. But we treasured those last three months and were privileged to be present at his quiet moment of departure.

Reliving mentally that experience of my brother’s death, I sought to enroll my husband Jerry in Hospice before we even left the Denver hospital. Jerry was resistant to the idea of Hospice, just as Jim had also been at first. Just as our Aunt Marian had been before him. And just as our mother had been before all of them. But the journeys with these beloved family members had taught me not to resist the support from people trained and experienced in assisting the dying and their families. I had come to regard Hospice workers as angels.

“Here’s the thing,” I told my husband. “You are not required to die when you get on Hospice. In fact, many people improve under Hospice care and sometimes even go off the service.

“Besides,” I added. “I will need their help.”

He consented to sign up.

Back at our home in Kansas, we met the Hospice nurses in charge of planning his care right away. As soon as Jerry felt the wave of understanding and respect from these women, his resistance began to fade. He watched gratefully as the Hospice supervising nurse tossed aside whole bottles of various prescriptions we had brought home from the Denver pharmacy by order of the oncologist–“Won’t need this, or this….”  She trimmed down his medication to pain management. My pill-hating husband began to relax. And as he joked with her about all the goings-on, and she joked back, trust was built.

Jerry, by nature a reclusive man, came to welcome visits by the Hospice nurses, who always left comfort and encouragement in their wake. They were attentive to his pain and this was managed so well that he rarely complained of discomfort.

My husband and I used those last two months to say things to each other that needed to be said. For hours at a time, we casually drove the scenic country roads like we had done in the early years of our marriage, reveling in the beauty of the land, remarking on the resilience of the early pioneers, discussing the people who lived in the isolated homesteads we passed. And as we cruised those dirt roads, we reminisced about the details, as well as the big picture, of our life together. We spoke straightforwardly of the good, the not-so-good, all of it. It was cleansing, liberating.

A very private person, Jerry wanted his illness kept secret from most people. But our children and grandchildren came often and, for one entire week, we were reunited with all of them in a meaningful, poignant goodbye gathering.

One afternoon during this gathering, Jerry awoke from a long nap and said, in his weakening voice, “I just had a pleasant thought.” This expression was uncharacteristic of his ordinary speech, so I took special notice. “Let’s call Dan Fields and see if he will bring his horses into town and give us a buggy ride,” he said.

Dan, a friend of Jerry’s, had a team of horses and several nice wagons with which he provided beautiful additions to weddings and other events. When I relayed Jerry’s dying request, Dan was startled and sad to learn of his illness, but willingly came to load up and haul the entire Jerry Vrbas family around town in his open, horse-drawn wagon. There was great satisfaction on my husband’s face as we climbed in. It was March, but we loudly and joyfully sang Christmas carols, as well as nursery rhymes and “Home on the Range,” as we clip-clopped through the main intersection of our small town. We squealed in mixed horror and delight when Dan drove the wagon up the long high school hill and the team practically galloped on the way back down. What a ride!

Community members watched the raucous group go by with tolerant smiles. Jerry said later that the discomfort of bouncing around in that wagon was almost more than he could take. But his pleasure at experiencing his vision accomplished had overruled the pain.

That evening, as we prepared to turn in for the night, Jerry looked around at our kids and grandkids. Then he spoke slowly and articulately, as one making a great pronouncement.

“This is our WEALTH,” he told me.

That statement will ring in my spirit throughout the rest of my life.

It was Saturday, less than two weeks after our family gathering. The kids were taking turns coming to see us, a few at a time. That afternoon, we were alone and Jerry wanted to take a ride on the dirt roads. I drove around slowly for about an hour while he mostly dozed in the passenger seat. When we got home, he had trouble getting up the front steps. Feeling a change coming, I went to the hardware store, bought a shower extension and, under my husband’s direction, installed the shower head and hose in our bathroom.

A few hours later, I placed the bench that Hospice had brought us in the shower stall and helped him bathe. There was now a marked change in him.

“Should I stand up now?” he asked quietly as I dried him with a towel.

“You’re already standing up.” I gently replied.

I dressed him in his pajamas and helped him to lie down on the bed. Jerry was beginning to drift away.

What followed was what I can only describe as a beautiful conversation with God. It was the first prayer I had ever heard him say.

“Thank you, God, for my life,” he repeated several times, his tone purposeful and quietly passionate. “Thank you for my wonderful wife. Thank you for my children. Thank you for my LIFE.”

Jerry, speaking in a faraway, dreamy voice, and I, speaking with strength that could only have come from God, then asked each other for forgiveness for times we had been unkind. We granted each other that forgiveness and even shook hands on it. As I reached my hand out to him for that little formal handshake, I stated, “Then we’re good.” It was the resolution of our marriage story.

One thing still pressed on me, though: Jerry’s relationship with God had not included Jesus. Having “thrown out the baby with the bath water” when he rejected organized religion as a young adult, Jerry believed in God but didn’t consider himself a Christian. He had supported me in my taking our children to church but had never accompanied us.

During his illness, he had accepted visits from a few friends, as well as our pastor, whom he respected. One of my special friends from church, a woman he especially respected for her forthrightness and honesty, also came to visit briefly. They joked and razzed each other as was their custom as I left them alone to talk. Later, she told me that all she had said to him was “Just remember to call on the name of Jesus. There’s power in that name.”

Not one to doubt God’s overall management of things, I wasn’t particularly worried about my husband’s standing with his Creator. But that evening, startled to realize that I might be the last person to be able to engage in conversation with him, I asked this question of my Christianity-resistant husband: “Did they teach you about Jesus when you were growing up?”

“Not really,” he replied.

Oh, boy, I thought. Evangelism isn’t my gifting and Jerry, even when well, was a man of few words. How to condense Jesus into one brief statement, and on the fly, as it were?

The sentence just came stumbling out of my mouth.

“Well, Jesus is the aspect of God who, when you really need him, is right there with you,” I said.

(“Lame!” I chided myself. But I left it there.)

We were quiet and at peace as we tucked in for the night. But a few hours later, Jerry awoke in pain that he had not experienced thus far. I helped him to the bathroom but he couldn’t urinate. “There must be an obstruction,” I told myself. “He probably needs to be catheterized.”

As I tried to help him back to bed, he slipped weakly and slowly to the floor. And I couldn’t lift him.

I called our police chief’s private number. He wasn’t on duty but he came immediately and helped lift Jerry into bed. I saw tears in that compassionate man’s eyes as he left.

It was about 3 a.m., which I felt was too early to call the nurse about the increasing pain. I gave Jerry the maximum dose of morphine but by 6:00 on this Sunday morning, he was beginning to cry out, begging for relief. I called and our nurse came as quickly as she could. Rather than alleviating the pain as we both expected, the catheterization had no helpful effect and the pain continued to increase. The nurse got her supervising doctor on the phone and consulted with him on additional medication. Our local pharmacist interrupted his Sunday morning to fill a prescription for fentanyl.

Meanwhile, realizing that Jerry was no longer going to be able to walk, I arranged for delivery of a hospital bed. Together, the nurse and I moved Jerry to a recliner. She helped me disassemble our old four-poster to make room for the hospital bed, which the Hospice-affiliated delivery man brought and set up. All the while, my husband’s pleas for relief continued in the background.

As this difficult day wore on, Jerry cried out more and more. The nurse and I were both becoming distraught.

“Help me! Oh, God, help me!” Jerry cried. “God, help me!”

It was horrible. I stood there helpless as the nurse consulted again and again with the doctor on the phone.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Please help me!” Jerry begged.

Awash in a feeling of powerlessness, I was just realizing that I would have to leave the room because I could no longer bear his desperate cries of pain. Then abruptly, he stopped. His brow knitted together in a frown, as though he were trying to remember something. Suddenly, it appeared as though a thought had come to him. His brow unfurled and his face took on an earnest expression.

“Jesus,” he said tentatively, then he repeated the name, firmly this time.

“Jesus,” he stated.

And then he began to cry out again, only this time he cried, “Oh, Jesus, Oh, Jesus! Please help me! Jesus!”

Within seconds, he began to sigh–big, deep sighs of relief. Ahhhhhhh. The pain was lifting.

Stunned at what I had just witnessed, and fearing I might be hallucinating in my exhaustion and distress, I turned to the nurse for confirmation.

“Did you just hear my husband call on the name of Jesus?” I asked her. Her eyes were wide as she looked at me.

“Yes,” she affirmed in a hushed tone, nodding.

And then, in a relieved and very soft voice, Jerry made a little joke, which neither of us was able to catch. But we both heard what he said next.

“Ya gotta laugh,” Jerry said distinctly, with a little philosophical shrug.

Those were to be his last words.

As he relaxed into peaceful quiet, our nurse entered her data into her laptop and I put sheets on the hospital bed. I also made up a sleeping pad for myself on the floor next to his bed, as I knew this would be my station for the duration of our time together.

Our nurse helped me assist Jerry into bed and settle him comfortably. She explained Jerry’s medication schedule, which would require alternating pain meds every two hours. She finished her duties and left.

It was now late afternoon. It had been a long, hard night and an even harder day. I was utterly exhausted and was preparing to lie down on my floor bed, but I took the time to call one friend, the friend who had spoken those simple words to my husband that seemed to have stuck.

“I wanted you to know that I just witnessed Jerry Vrbas call on the name of Jesus,” I said. I told her about how Jerry’s pain had then been immediately eased. She and I shared a few moments of amazement and gratitude before we hung up.

Preparing to crash on my floor bed, I looked at the instructions I’d written down and calculated. It was now nearly 4 p.m. He was due for a dose of one of the pain meds soon, at 4:15, but he was breathing so easily now that I thought it should be safe to delay the dose until 5:00. That way, I could grab nearly a whole hour’s nap. I set my alarm for 5:00 and sank instantly into an exhausted deep sleep.

I awoke gently on my own. I looked at my watch and was astonished to see it was only half an hour later. Inexplicably, I felt completely rested, as though I’d had a full night’s sleep. Amazed that I could feel so good after such an ordeal and so little rest, I stretched and listened for Jerry’s breathing.

There was only quiet.

I stood up from my bed on the floor and looked down at my husband’s face. He was gone.

“What??!” I exclaimed loudly, staring at his silent face. “This?! This is what you’re going to do??!”

As those crazy words came out of my mouth, I realized that he had left without me holding his hand. He had died in that short time I wasn’t looking. I was hurt.

Then I recognized that this was just like Jerry, to wait until I was asleep and take his final departure in private. And it was just like God to give me that quick and restoring rest so that I could handle this moment. And the coming days. And years.

In the hours and days that ensued, it did occur to me to consider whether the pain medicine had been too strong. Perhaps the dosages on that desperate day had hastened his death. Even today, I meet that question with as much courage and honesty as I can.  Had my exhausted perceptions edited that climactic scene with my husband into a perfect Hallmark moment? Was it really Jesus who took Jerry’s pain away? Or was it an overdose that quelled the pain and then nudged him out of his failing body?

However, attempts by dark, whispering voices to make me question what I experienced that day have failed to rob me of peace. What prevails is gratitude. When doubts arise, my answer is that Jerry Vrbas, having said “Goodbye” to the people he loved and “Hello” to Jesus, was fully ready to leave this life and begin the next. My answer is that God orchestrated a departure for him that was both dramatic and merciful. My answer is to shake off any spirit of heaviness and remember Jerry’s last words on the subject: “Ya gotta laugh.”

Once again, I had been allowed into that sacred space with a loved one who was dying–even though that independent, private guy who was my husband took that last step alone. Even though he did choose to take his last breath and slip away exactly during that short time when I wasn’t holding his hand. Yes, that was annoying and I plan to speak to him about it when I see him again.

Happy 45th anniversary, Jerry! I’m glad we found each other. You’re right: We have been the recipients of unfathomable wealth.