Starting To Feel Like Job (February 27, 2020)

 
I wrote this short story about 2 weeks after my father died in 2020. I was feeling pretty emotionally down at the time.
 
First I lost my cousin Bob who had been like a brother to me for 36 years until he died a sudden tragic death in 1994. Two weeks later, I lost my friend Al, who had mentored me as a young believer in Christ. Al died suddenly from complications related to too much potassium loss from diuretics. Two weeks after I lost Al and 4 weeks after I lost Bob, Bob’s father – my uncle – died of cancer. Then I had a break for quite a while, though I did lose some older relatives during that time. In 2003 I lost my mom whose last years on earth were not too bad health-wise, other than the chronic problems associated with emphysema. However, her last month on earth, in the hospital, was something no one would want to go through… A broken hip sent her to the hospital. The next day she suffered a mild heart attack. A couple of days later she had respiratory failure and had to be placed on a ventilator. Thanks to that, she contracted pneumonia. And a poorly placed IV resulted in gangrene in her hand. If that was not enough, a nurse – who became famous world-wide for killing at least 40 patients across 8 or 9 hospitals – attempted to kill my mother with an insulin overdose, and bear in mind that my mother was not an insulin user. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and my mother was taken off life support and died 2 days later… and I was not able to be at her bedside because the hospital was kicking her out and I had to stay home waiting for an ambulance to bring her home to die… only to have the hospital call me and say that my mother died while the ambulance was on its way to the hospital to pick my mother up to bring her home to my house… so they then asked me if I wanted to come in right away to my mother’s hospital room or should they move her dead body to the hospital morgue.
 
Next, I lost a friend named Eric who at age 45 succumbed to bladder cancer after living much of his life in an institution for severely handicapped individuals, due to his cerebral palsy. I was living in another state at the time, but wanted to visit Eric when I heard that his cancer was no longer in remission and had taken a turn for the worse. Instead of visiting Eric in the hospital, I ended up going to his funeral instead, due to how rapidly his cancer worsened. I lost my dear friend JC (James Craig) who loved to share the gospel and who loved to make people laugh. He was in his fifties when he died of cancer. As with my friend Eric, JC died before I could pay him a last visit. Then I lost another friend Mark (also in his fifties) who loved the Lord and had a quiet and gentle spirit but also a good sense of humor. He died of pancreatic cancer I believe. Then I lost my dear wife Valerie – to cancer of the lymph nodes – who I had too little time with… we never reached our 10th wedding anniversary. Valerie died just 4 months after she was diagnosed with lymphoma and just 8 weeks after we had moved 300 miles to a new home across the state to be near her two brothers. You know how people say “A part of me died when my spouse died”? Well that statement was literally true in my case. My wife was a three-time kidney transplant recipient. For her 3rd kidney transplant I was the donor.
 
Then I lost a dear brother in the Lord – Dan – who loved to share his faith using his tractor trailer truck as an evangelistic billboard. Dan had ministered to me by phone almost every week after my wife died only to lose his own life in a tragic house fire. After Dan, it was Mike to go next… Mike was my best buddy in college who succumbed to brain cancer before I had a chance to travel to Florida to say goodbye. After Mike it was Ron who I drew close to while living near where Ron lived and meeting him in a local church. Ron loved the Lord and loved to study end time events and world affairs. He also ministered to me greatly after my wife died, though mostly by mail and in person when I visited him. He died in a nursing home just 3 months after suffering a stroke. I had no idea that he had even suffered a stroke until I went to visit him, found his house abandoned and was informed by his neighbor that he was in a nearby nursing home. When I got to the nursing home, I was told that Ron had died the night before. Then I had a reprieve for over a year until my dear dad got sick and in his old age, his fragile health quickly went from bad to worse. In February of 2020 I lost my loving father whom I had known for 64 years. Little did I know that just 11 days later I would lose my furry friend and faithful canine companion Eloise, who had comforted me so many times throughout many of these losses. The limp she had had for a few months that I thought was a bad sprain, turned out to be bone cancer.
 
In summary, all I can say is what Job said:
 
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21
 
And that is exactly what I said the moment my wife took her last breath in the hospital bed in my living room as the home-hospice nurse looked on.
 
I know that I am not alone in my sorrows. We all go through these kinds of experiences in life. Death is a part of life, in this sin-cursed world. Many people have far greater losses in life than I will ever know, I am quite sure of that. If our faith is in the giver of life, and if we are trusting our eternal souls to the Lord Jesus Christ, we can confidently say what the apostle Paul said here:
 
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39
 
— RM Kane
 

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