ESCAPE - Chapter 1

   I awoke with a start. The sun was streaming in through the venetian blinds. I looked at the clock; it was 8:10 a.m. Jumping out of bed, I ran to Laura’s room. She was lying on her back, mouth open as if screaming, and her right hand gripping the bell. Her limbs were stiff and locked in place; her flesh was cold; she was not breathing. She literally had a death grip on the bell. The bell was a schoolmarm’s bell we had bought years ago in an antique store while on vacation in Maine. For years it had stood on the mantle among other collectibles. When Laura became bedridden, it became useful as a way for her to call for help. During the day time, if her aide or nurse was out of the room, she could call them with the bell. At night in bed I would hear the bell, even if I were asleep, and I would go down the hall to her room and find out what she wanted.

   I went back to my room and hurriedly dressed and shaved. I called the hospice offices. Laura’s nurse, Patsy Godwin, spoke to me.

   “I found Laura in bed stiff, cold, and not breathing. She is dead.”

   “Reverend Sterner, I am so sorry to hear that Laura has passed. I will be there soon to wash the body, collect her medications and equipment, and I will call the coroner. After he has pronounced her dead, you can call the funeral home to come for her body. As you know, according to Laura’s Living Will, there was a Do Not Resuscitate order. Even if she were not cold and stiff, if she just was not breathing, and if her nurse was right there, we couldn’t have tried to get her breathing again. Our role has been to keep her as comfortable and free of pain as possible. I will also call her physician. He may want to talk to you.”

   In the kitchen I toasted a bagel, put cream cheese on it and made a cup of instant coffee. While I was eating my breakfast, the door bell rang. It was Avril Koontz, one of Laura’s daytime aides.

   “Mrs. Koontz, I won’t be needing you from now on. Laura died in her sleep last night.”

   Screaming like a wounded person, she pushed past me and ran into Laura’s room.

   “Oh Mrs. Sterner, oh how can I bear to see you like this? It looks like you were screaming for help and ringing that bell and no one would come to help you. Did your husband go out and leave you by yourself, or was he sleeping so sound that he just didn’t hear you? I’ve been telling him for a long time that he needed to hire some aides to stay here at night. He just smiled and thanked me. Now, see what happened. A dear sweet woman has passed away because no one came when she needed help.”

   “As I said, we won’t be needing you. I’ll see you out now.”

   I took my bagel and coffee in the living room, sat on the living room couch, and tried to calm down after Mrs. Koontz’s outburst. I began thinking back over the years that Laura and I had been together. This year had been our thirty-fifth year of marriage.

   We met while I was in the Air Force. I wandered into a USO in downtown Syracuse, New York. There was a friendly young lady there who greeted me. We talked for a while and I told her that I was looking for a girl to take to the movies that evening.

   “That couldn’t be me. First, because we aren’t allowed to make dates with young men who come in here. Second, and more important, because I am married to a soldier who is in the Army overseas. Listen, you seem like a really nice guy, so  I am going to bend the rules somewhat. This is the phone number of a friend of mine, Laura. Call her up, tell her Madeline gave you her number. Ask her to go to the movies. Maybe she will.”

   Laura agreed to go out with me. I picked her up at her house. It was a shabby looking house in a run down neighborhood. Her clothes were old and tired but clean. She had such a sparkling personality and made me so happy to be with her that I never again noticed her clothes. We dated several times a week after that. She was a senior in high school, two years younger than me. I didn’t often have money to take her to movies or concerts. We mostly walked and talked about our hopes and dreams for the future. I wanted to go into the ministry, but I didn’t have the money to go to college. I was at Syracuse University, studying Russian on Uncle Sam’s nickel. I planned to continue my college work in night school courses while I was in the Air Force. When I finished college then I could go to seminary on the G.I. Bill. 

   Laura wanted to get married to a good, kind, Christian man, and be a wife and mother of three or four children. Her own childhood had been as an only child in a home where her father drank a lot, her mother was constantly complaining, and they both fought with each other almost every night. Laura had made it her goal in life to be happy, to be pleasant to others, and to make them happy. She dreamed of what it would be like for children to be raised by a father who was good and kind and a mother who was pleasant and happy.

   After my courses at the University and after Laura graduated from high school, we became engaged. I was stationed overseas for a year at a remote military post. We wrote to each other several times a week. When I returned, I was stationed outside Baltimore. We were married at South Presbyterian Church in Syracuse. We rented an apartment in a row house in Baltimore.      Laura worked in a dime store during the day while I was at work. Meantime, I continued my studies in night school. A year and a half after our marriage, our first son Philip was born. Then the same month that I graduated from University College, University of Maryland our second son, Thomas was born. I stayed in the Air Force just until the end of August after I received my college degree.

   Then I went to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Between part time jobs, supply preaching, and the G.I.Bill I was able to support our family. Laura was very thrifty and creative in making our tiny income go a long way. She sewed curtains for our apartment, made quilts for the bed, gave herself permanents and gave me haircuts. A lot of the wives complained about how poor they had to live. Laura was always happy with every little blessing that came our way. At the end of my second year of seminary, Matthew was born. I wondered how we were going to afford a doctor and the hospital. Laura had become friends with one of the other wives who was a nurse. This young woman had taken a midwifery course. She agreed to deliver our baby at home. Everything went just like clockwork. I suppose if anything had gone wrong, the nurse would have been in big trouble.

   The last year of seminary all of the students were scouting out prospects for churches. Most wanted to go to a large church as assistant pastor. That was the accepted way to move on up to being pastor of a larger church in the next move. I started looking at the multiple church fields and eventually was called to a three church field in West Virginia.

   We moved into a big four bedroom manse that was at least a hundred years old. It was the beginning of summer. One of the church members came over and plowed up part of the back yard for a garden. He said, “We’ll watch how that garden does and judge what the Lord thinks of our new preacher.” Laura took that as a challenge. She went to the store and bought a trowel, a spade, a hoe, and a rake plus a dozen packages of seeds. Then she went to the library and borrowed a book on gardening. Mrs. Moffatt, a jolly older woman who always wore an apron and a sun bonnet, came by one day and saw Laura in the garden. She was on her knees with a trowel in one hand and the gardening book in the other. That story soon spread all over the community and quickly endeared her to the hearts of the people.

   Throughout my ministry she was truly a helpmate. She was supportive when I was discouraged or under attack in my work. She was a wonderful mother. She remembered and made a reality of her dream to raise children in a home that was pleasant and happy.  I hope that I was the sort of father she wanted for her children, one who was kind and good. She stayed at home, preferring to be with the children full time over having more money but less time with the children. After three years in that parish, we had a fourth son, Nathaniel. All of the boys grew up to be well adjusted adults and good parents.

   After the boys were grown and away from home, we used my month vacation time to travel. We went to the Grand Canyon and Pike’s Peak on one trip. Another year we went to Texas and visited Tyler, Austin, and San Antonio. Another year we went to Boston and then on up to Portland, Maine. Laura was so fascinated with the lighthouses that the following year we went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and saw five lighthouses there. No matter where we went Laura found flower gardens. She especially enjoyed strolling leisurely through formal gardens.

   At the age of fifty two important things happened in Laura’s life. An uncle, her mother’s brother, died. He had no children of his own and had always looked on Laura as the daughter he never had. We had visited him once or twice when we were near his home in Rochester, New York. The last time had been when we vacationed in Boston and Maine. We stopped at his home on the way back. He had a nice house, but nothing ostentatious. When Lyle Ferguson died, he left his home and the bulk of his estate to charity. He left $250,000 to Laura. We put the money in the bank in Laura’s name with my name to receive it in case of death.

    About two months later Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor recommended a radical mastectomy and Laura agreed. It was found that some cancer had spread to the lymph glands. We decided to use some of her inheritance to go to the A.D. Anderson Clinic in Houston. There the doctors made the same recommendation that Laura’s doctors in Arkansas made – chemotherapy in conjunction with radiation therapy. They told her she could get both at C.A.R.T.I. in Little Rock.

   The chemotherapy and radiation took a terrible toll on Laura. It made her sick. Her hair fell out. Her happy spirit was not only dampened, but nearly extinguished. I tried to cheer her up, but I never was as good at that as she was. In time the treatments had the desired effect. The doctors pronounced her “cancer free”. She decided to have reconstructive surgery. After all the pain and discomfort of that surgery, it failed and the implant had to be removed. She had post-surgical complications the second time and then developed cellulitis.

   It took almost a year for her to get her strength back, her hair to grow back, her happy spirit to begin to sing again. The people in the church rejoiced at her victory over the BIG C. I had taken so much time off taking Laura to treatments and helping her in the home that we decided to forego taking a vacation that year. I encouraged the boys to come for a visit now that their mother was feeling better. We have seven grandchildren but we rarely have seen them. Philip and his wife Molly came all the way from Montana with their two children.

   Philip is a proverbial country doctor in a small town. He is a “bear” of a man – strong, rough hewn. His brown hair is always tousled and his face is leathery, but he has Laura’s eyes that sparkle when he is happy or when he is mad. Of all of our boys he fits the description “good and kind”. Most of his patients live in the surrounding countryside. He goes to their home or ranch when he is needed in an emergency. Many times he has driven as far as his four wheel drive Jeep Cherokee will go, then borrowed a horse to go the rest of the way. Molly is from Montana, a real country girl. She is a little bit plump, has rosy cheeks and a ready smile. Laura loves Molly and Molly loves Laura. They are kindred spirits. Molly seems to radiate warmth. Philip jokingly calls her “my Burnside stove”. She was raised in a family of boys and her happiness is hearty.

   Nathaniel also came to visit that year. He has made a career of the Army Special Forces. Nathaniel is tall and stands or sits ramrod straight. His face is weathered, his jaws are rigid, and his eyes are steely and alert. Nathaniel has never married. He says that he doesn’t want to leave a wife and children at home while he is sent from one hot spot in the world to another. He has been in more combat than a person should ever have to see. That, I believe, is the real reason that he has never married. His eyes have a haunted look. One time at night he woke up screaming and yelling. He got up and went out walking for hours.