by Ron Hall
Carson, then Regan, crawled higher on the bed and kissed Deborah on the cheek. Then they slipped out, seeming to sense their mother had more to say. They were right. She asked me to help her into the wheelchair that the hospice people had parked by the bed. She wanted to go to the garden near the waterfall that architects had designed into the landscape behind our house. She’d rarely been able to enjoy it since we moved in.
I pushed her chair near the edge of the shallow reflecting pool and pulled up a lawn chair next to her. Though she’d been in command in the bedroom, she suddenly seemed more subdued. She spoke, but even the soft splash of water spilling into the pool was enough to steal the sound of her voice.
I asked her to repeat herself and leaned so close that her lips brushed my ear. “Even her,” she said.
I knew immediately what she meant. True to her promise of eleven years before, the one she made the day after learning of my infidelity, she had never once mentioned the Beverly Hills artist.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to go there.”
“Yes,” she whispered resolutely. “It was a good thing, a thing that turned out good for us. Look at the last eleven years . . . if she hadn’t happened, our life together would never have been as wonderful as it has been. And now you have my permission to go back to her.”
I told her I didn’t even want to think of those things. I was still praying that God would heal her, I said, and added,“I’m still hoping God will take me first.”
47
October 25
We had prayed to be able to celebrate our thirty-first anniversary together. Now, watching her cling to life, her breathing hitched and shallow, I wasn’t sure she would live to see it. But she did. As daylight peeked through the crack in our bedroom drapes, I whispered in her ear: “Debbie, we woke up.” But she could not answer. Five days earlier, she had fallen silent.
So I talked for both of us. Read to her from Proverbs 31 about the “excellent wife” . . . reminisced about the first time I saw her . . . walked through memories of our first few dates to football games, when I was too frightened to kiss her and serenaded her with “Mack the Knife” instead. She lay still on the bed, at less than eighty pounds barely raising the sheet. I gently slid my arm under her head and touched her face with my fingertips.
“Blink if you can hear me,” I whispered. She did and tears trickled like tiny streams.
In the afternoon, the hospice doctor came, and after a quick examination called me out of the room to tell me that Deborah would not live through the day. I chose not to believe him. I chose to believe that God would not be so cruel as to take her on our anniversary.
The next day would have marked a week of total silence, but Deborah began to stir and moan. That afternoon, the kids and I, and Mary Ellen, were sitting with her, when she suddenly cried out, “Ron! Get me some wings!”
It wasn’t a request, but a command, and it startled me into laughter. Unable to move for nearly two weeks, she now began reaching her hands toward the ceiling—right, left, right, left—as if she were climbing a ladder. Fearing she’d yank her IV tubes out, all four of us tried to restrain her, but she struggled mightily, fighting to go up, up. She really was no more than a living skeleton; it was an extraordinary display of strength.
Day passed, then a long, thrashing night as we all stayed with her. “Jesus! Jesus!” Deborah cried as sunlight crept into the room. “Can you see them? They’re flying!”
“What are you seeing?” I asked.
“Angels!” she said. “There they are!” And she would point to one part of the room, then quickly to another. We followed her motions expectantly, hoping to see angels ourselves. Her climbing and crying out continued for twenty-three hours. Then, as suddenly as she had broken her silence, she fell silent again. Ice gripped my heart as I thought she might have died.
But after about two minutes, she spoke again in a loud, clear voice: “Jesus! How are you?”
Another minute of silence and then resolutely: “No, I think I’ll stay here!”
It was 2:00 a.m. Regan and I stared at each other, astonished. Had we just witnessed a visitation? I pressed my ear against Deborah’s soft cotton gown; her heart was still beating strong. I kissed her cheek.
“It’s okay to go with Jesus,” I said. “Regan, Carson, and I will join you in heaven soon.”
“And Mary Ellen . . . ,” she whispered faintly.
“Yes, and Mary Ellen,” I said, thrilled to know she had fully comprehended the moment.
Early the next morning, Denver showed up on our doorstep in dirty, ragged clothes, smelling like cigarettes.
“Come on in,” I said, opening the door wide. “Want some coffee?”
“I didn’t come for no visit,” he said. “I come to deliver a word from the Lord.”
He was agitated and looked like he’d been up all night. He took a seat at the kitchen table, leaned forward and eyed me. “Last night, I was drivin up on the interstate, Mr. Ron, when I felt the need to pull over and pray. So I pull over on the side of the road up on that hill that look over the city, and that’s when God spoke to my heart. God says Miss Debbie’s spirit is cryin out to be with the Lord and showed me visions of angels comin into her room to take her home. But the saints on earth was holdin on to her body ’cause her work here ain’t finished yet.”
He told me he had seen Jesus and angels and lightning. He also told me what time he’d seen this “vision”: precisely the same time it had happened in our home.
It had now been more than three weeks since Deborah had eaten. Her skin clung thinly to her limbs like gauze, hugged her cheekbones, crept into her eye sockets. How many times had various doctors predicted she would not live through the day? And yet a “foolish” old homeless man had been far more accurate than the learned medicine men.
The next morning Denver knocked at the kitchen door again. We sat at the kitchen table, stirred our coffee. He dropped his head and paused a long moment, unhurriedly collecting his thoughts like shells on a beach. Then: “God gives each person on the earth a set of keys, keys to live this life down here on the earth. Now in this set, there is one key you can use to unlock prison doors and set captives free.”
Denver turned his head just slightly so that the right side of his face was closer to me than the left. He leaned in with his right shoulder and narrowed his eyes even farther. “Mr. Ron, I was captive in the devil’s prison. That was easy for Miss Debbie to see. But I got to tell you: Many folks had seen me behind the bars in that prison for more than thirty years, and they just walked on by. Kept their keys in their pocket and left me locked up. Now I ain’t tryin to run them other folks down, ’cause I was not a nice fella—dangerous—and prob’ly just as happy to stay in prison. But Miss Debbie was different—she seen me behind them bars and reached way down in her pocket and pulled out the keys God gave her and used one to unlock the prison door and set me free.”
Denver pounded home those last words like eight separate nails, then sat back in his chair, sipped his coffee. He put the mug down. “She’s the onlyest person that ever loved me enough not to give up on me, and I praise God that today I can sit here in your home a changed man—a free man.”
48
November 1
A week past our anniversary, the hospice doctor and nurses were beyond amazement that Deborah was still alive. They had stopped making predictions and instead discussed how the books on dying should be altered, or at least footnoted, to include the possible outcomes of people like Deborah, who, when death came calling, summoned the strength to reschedule and politely close the door.
For months, we had been in a long Texas drought, but now dark skies brought cold, sluicing rains. I imagined that the angels were crying. But why? I thought bitterly. It seemed God was getting His way. I remembered what Denver had said, that He needed to take home some good folks to work His will on earth. I thought that was a crappy plan.
That morning, Deborah lay in our bed, still and spectra
l. But at noon, her body began to tremble, then convulse. Within seconds, violent seizures began ripping through her torso and limbs. Her face contorted in pain. I jumped into the bed and tried to hold on as she shook and thrashed, pleading silently with God to stop torturing her. Alan, Mary, the kids, and the hospice people watched in growing horror.
After two hours, I leaped out of the bed and literally shook my fist at heaven. “Stop it, God! Please!”
For two more hours, Deborah writhed on the bed like a live power line. After what seemed like a frantic consultation, the hospice people decided to give her phenobarbital. The dose was enormous; it would probably stop the pain, but it might kill her. The hospice doctor asked if I was willing to administer the drugs. I consented without hesitation. I would’ve done anything to stop her suffering. Still, I wondered if I was signing her death warrant.
As the drugs began to flow, her tremors subsided, closing off what might have been a glimpse into hell. Without a doubt, I was now ready to see her safely to her eternal home. And I thought she must be ready to go, too.
November 2
Early in the morning, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I saw Denver standing there, ragged, looking again like a vagrant who had not slept. But his eyes were different this time—blank and hollow, almost as if he were in shock. I hugged him, but he only stood there, as though he was too exhausted to respond. He kept his head low and for a couple of minutes, wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“I didn’t come for no coffee or no visit,” he said as we took seats at the kitchen table again. “I come to deliver a word from the Lord.”
By this time, my towering faith had crumbled. The experts had failed. I had failed. And God, it appeared, was on the verge of failing, too. The God who promised that whatever we asked for in faith would be done in heaven had not delivered.
But I also knew it was Denver who had first predicted that a thief would come for Deborah. And when the doctors said Deborah wouldn’t last another day, Denver said she would and he was right. Denver knew about the angels before anyone had told him what had happened in our bedroom. Somehow, in a way I couldn’t understand, this simple man was dialed into God. So when this time he said he had a word from the Lord, I decided I needed a witness. I bounded up the stairs and summoned Carson. As soon as we returned to the kitchen together, Denver fixed us with his eye, narrow and intense.
“Mr. Ron, I’ve been out on a hill overlookin the city all night long, and I heard from the Lord. He said Miss Debbie’s body is cryin out for paradise, but the saints here on earth still has a chain around her and won’t let her go. So the Lord told me to come and break the chain.”
I didn’t speak, but flashed back to Deborah’s violent seizures, her crying out. Was she crying out for paradise? And I wondered what “the chain” could be and who were the saints? Later, I learned that thirty of Deborah’s friends had gathered in our yard the evening before and, linking hands, encircled our home to pray that God would heal her. Denver continued: “The Lord also told me to tell Miss Debbie that she could lay down her torch, and the Lord told me to pick it up. So, Mr. Ron, out of obedience to God, I’m here to break the chain, and I gon’ ask you and Carson to pray with me to break it.”
After nineteen months of praying for a miracle, it seemed strange now to be praying for God to take Deborah. But as I began, new promises from Scripture came to my lips unbidden. “Father,” I prayed, “help us as a family to fully give Deborah over to You. Help us trust that You have ordained from the beginning the number of our days and that You won’t take Deborah until she has completed the number You have ordained for her.”
When we finished, Denver drilled me with a stare, and surprised us with words that seemed to contradict his prayer. “Still, Miss Debbie ain’t goin nowhere till her work on earth is through.”
Then tears spilled from his eyes. I had never seen him weep. His tears flowed into the lines in his face like rivers of grief, and it hit me again how much he loved Deborah. I marveled at the intricate tapestry of God’s providence. Deborah, led by God to deliver mercy and compassion, had rescued this wreck of a man who, when she fell ill, in turn became her chief intercessor. For nineteen months, he prayed through the night until dawn and delivered the word of God to our door like a kind of heavenly paperboy. I was embarrassed that I once thought myself superior to him, stooping to sprinkle my wealth and wisdom into his lowly life.
49
I’d shed plenty a’ tears when I was prayin out by the Dumpster, but I hadn’t ever cried in front a’ Mr. Ron before. I couldn’t help it, though. I knowed everythin that could be done for Miss Debbie had been done. The doctors had done all they could do. Mr. Ron had done all he could do. And God had laid it on my heart that it was time for Miss Debbie to go on home to be with Him. But grief had still grabbed ahold of me and them tears spilled out ’fore I knew what hit me.
I tried to catch em with the backs of my fingers, and I could see Mr. Ron and Carson sittin there starin at me, a little bit surprised. Then they both looked down and started stirrin their coffee. That’s when I got up and headed down the hall toward Miss Debbie’s room. I didn’t plan to do that. Seemed like the Lord just tugged at me and I felt like that’s what I was s’posed to do.
The bedroom door was standin open and there Miss Debbie was, layin on her back in the middle of the big bed, thin and weak-lookin under the sheet. The curtains was open and the mornin light was gray, comin in through the rain that drizzled down the glass.
Her eyes was closed and her face had mainly wasted away till she didn’t look much like herself, ’cept for still bein beautiful. I stood there for a spell just watchin her breathe.
“How you doin, Miss Debbie?” I said after a little while. But she stayed still, her chest risin and fallin in the quiet. Now, I’d been in to see her several times, and Mr. Ron or Miss Mary Ellen or somebody’d always be there, just ’cause there wadn’t hardly ever a second when somebody wadn’t right by her side. Since we’d just prayed that prayer of lettin Miss Debbie’s soul sail on off to glory, I was kinda surprised Carson and Mr. Ron didn’t follow me back to the room. I figured they’d want to be there in case we needed to pray the same thing right here with her. But they didn’t come. Me and Miss Debbie was alone. Lookin back, I think maybe the Lord opened that little window in time to do His business.
I was standin on the left side a’ the bed, with her head by my right hand and her feet by my left hand. The sheet covering her thin body rose and fell, rose and fell, just a bare little bit. With her face turned up toward heaven the way it was, she couldn’t see me and I wadn’t even sure she could hear me. And I wanted to be sure she heard what I had come to say. So I put my right knee on the bed. Then I slipped my hand up under her head and raised it off the pillow just a little bit, and turned her head to my face.
“Miss Debbie,” I said.
She opened her eyes wide, starin straight at me.
I knowed she could hear me then, so I went right on. “I can understand how important it is to you that we keep on reachin out to the homeless. Now you done did all you could do. And God has put it on my heart to tell you that if you lay down the torch, I’ll pick it up and keep your ministry to the homeless goin.”
She didn’t move or say nothin, but her eyes started to shine up with tears. My heart started poundin, achin in my chest like it was too big for my body.
“So you can go on home now, Miss Debbie,” I said. “Go on home in peace.”
Her tears spilled over then and my heart stretched until I thought it would tear in two. I kept holdin her head up, so she could see me. Then I said the last words I ever spoke to her: “Farewell. I’ll see you on the other side.”
I laid her head back down on the pillow and she let her eyes slip closed. And I knowed that she knowed we’d never see each other again. Not in this life.
50
November 3
I no longer slept. I lay with Deborah through the night. She lay beside me, gaunt, he
r eyes fixed open, mouth slack, lifted heavenward as if on the verge of a question. Her chest rose and fell sporadically, sometimes in short, quick hitches, sometimes not at all. I watched red minutes tick by on the digital clock, eating up what remained of the life we had built. As dawn crept into the room, thunder rumbled. I could hear rain showering down the eaves, streaming through the gutters.
My New York partner, Michael, had called and asked if he could come see Deborah, and was on his way down. I had tried to discourage him and others from coming during these last weeks. Deborah had wasted away so that she barely raised the sheet that covered her. Her eyes had faded and seemed cruelly suspended in sockets of protruding bone. I wanted everyone to remember her as the beautiful, elegant woman they’d always known.
But Michael pressed, and since we were godparents to his son Jack, I said yes. Jewish by birth, he was not a particularly religious man. He knew we were Christians and had witnessed our own trek of faith. We’d talked about Jesus as Messiah, but that didn’t mesh with his own religious upbringing. Ours were philosophical discussions—friendly, never heated.
When Michael pulled up to the house at around 10:00 a.m., Mary Ellen and I were in the bedroom with Deborah, singing along to a CD of Christian songs, some of Deborah’s favorites. I went out to greet Michael, then he, Carson, and I went back to the bedroom. The moment Michael stepped through the door, the song “We Are Standing on Holy Ground” began to play: “We are standing on holy ground and I know that there are angels all around.”
As the song washed through the room, Michael looked at Deborah, then at Mary Ellen. “We are on holy ground,” he whispered. Then, as though someone had kicked the backs of his legs, he fell to his knees and wept. Frozen in place, Carson, Mary Ellen, and I traded glances. In the twenty years I had known him, I had never seen Michael cry. When the song ended, he collected himself. Pulling out a picture of Jack, he moved to the edge of the bed and placed it in Deborah’s palm, gently folding her fingers around it.