Kathy's "Inning" With A Harp and a Heffalump

It is nearly 3:00 a.m. this Friday morning and our vigil for Kathy peacefully continues on. After a rough day yesterday when respiratory issues raised their (inevitable) ugly heads, we tinkered with K's meds and got things back under relative control--relative that is because there is no doubt as to her residual departure.

In all my now 68 years I have never done anything so difficult as witnessing this now long goodbye. Imagine having guests that you would never see or be around again departing on your doorstep and having that departure taking now five days--that's kinda what this is like but the departure dialogue is but one-sided, with K comatose the entire time.

That being said, I have never been one to sit around and mope, witness yesterday afternoon while reading "Winnie The Pooh" to K (earlier that day having finished our aloud revisitation of "The Wind in the Willows") when in comes Mary the St Pats' resident folk harpist and, purely impromptu, we spent the next hour together, I reading to K of Pooh and Piglet's great adventure hunting for Heffalumps and Mary following in cantation with the strings of her harp. Not only was it a moving experience for all three of us but it also provided for an "inning" for Kathy, as bedridden terminal patients certainly can't have "outings"!

So the vigil for the inevitable goes stably onward. Kathy and I continue to be moved by your kind messages, prayers and Kandle Power--her www.kandlesforkathy.blogspot.com is truly something to behold. Emanating through those wonderful acts of kindness, by way of example, was an email message from my good South Carolina friend Mark Zion, who, upon learning of my intent to read to Kathy of the great Willows ventures of the Rat, the Mole, the Otter and the Toad, directed me to the apparition passage finding Rat and Mole afloat in search of Otter's then lost son, when Rat exclaims:  "O Mole! The beauty of it!  The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping!  Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet!  Row on, Mole, row!  For the music and the call must be for us."

I read this passage to Kathy three times yesterday when, during the course of the day, things looked most dim; it helped us both...thanks, pal.

So the watch continues and, as I mentioned yesterday, K is yet having a(nother) comfortable inning's stay here in Missoula, Montana, where the outside temperature has been dipping into the teens but where, inside, things are fireplace warm.

Thanks again to all of you for your most welcome outpouring of love to a most beautiful and deserving recipient--our Hostess With The Mostess.

Ron