Too Big for this World - Val's Story, Chap 21

I first posted this story in September of last year, but I had to share it again because it is chapter 21 and if you are following along, I didn't want to mess you up.  

Dear God

If I die tomorrow

Or a thousand tomorrows from now,

Will it matter?

Will I be changed

Or have changed the world?

Will another moment from eternity of existence

Cause the moon to fall

The oceans to weep

The trees to walk?

But if an extra heartbeat

Brings one smile to a teary eye

If all my heartbeats

Can make another soul sing

Another life less dull

Then my entire being has purpose

And eternity becomes an instant of joy.

By Pat Loehmer (1959-1999), written in 1977

 

My kids both loved their Aunt Patti, with all their precious, still-growing hearts. My baby girl was only three when Pat was diagnosed with cancer and nine when she died. Val never knew my sister when she wasn't fighting that insidious monster roaming her body.

And I never realized how much they were alike.

People think I'm bullheaded and independent, but that was nothing compared to my sister. When she started something, she would dig in her heels and get it done, never asking for help and never backing down. My son, Nick, is like that, too. Me? Not so much, if I start something and it causes me frustration, I'm more than willing to walk away and binge-watch episodes of "Friends".

          Val was just as independent and could dig in her heels just as deeply if she was working on something from her heart. And she was all heart. And so was her Aunt Patti. Both taken way too young - Pat at 39 and Val at 35. Sometimes, I think they were both too big for this world, too bold, too strong.

          And looking back, days after Val had left us, I think they both knew they weren't born to grow old on this planet; God had a plan that none of us left behind will ever understand. But somehow, deep inside, maybe Val and Pat understood.

(By the way, I was 37 when I lost my sister; Nick was 39 when he lost his. Sad, huh?)

Here's the really sad part. Only three of us are left from this picture at our wedding in 1997 - me, Nick and Hubby. Between 1999 and 2026, I lost Mom, both my sisters, and my beautiful daughter. 

Break #2 - Michigan's UP

 

September 21, Hannah, Hubby, and I took off for our annual trek to Michigan’s UP and specifically to the Jampot Bakery, aka the Monks. 

While Poppa was in line waiting to buy goodies, Hannah and I checked out Jacob’s Falls. She was not impressed.

Then we waitied around some more, even though there will be nothing in the haul for the pooch. 

Finally got to get up close to Lake Superior. So beautiful. 

My favorite spot in the Keweenaw Peninsula is Esrey Park. 

Something about it has always felt magical to me. 

Even if I don’t look so excited in this picture with Hubby. 

Not sure if you can read Hubby’s shirt, but he got it a year ago, after tripping on a tree root in the eastern UP. Don’t want a new shirt that reads, “I came, I saw, I fell down some rock stairs.” 

Last stop was atop Brockway Mountain for the breathtaking views.  

We don’t take the steep drive up here every year. 

But when we do, it has always been worth it. 

Taking a Break

           I thought it was time to take an emotional break from telling the story of my daughter and me. I’ve had a crazy schedule the last couple of months; how I had time to continue posting here as much as I did is a mystery to me.

          Between September 16 and October 11, I went out of town four times, for a total of nine nights. Why did I do that? What was I thinking? Who knows. But I did have a good time. Oh, and two of those trips were even out of state.

          Okay, so here is trip #1.

          From the 16^th through the 20^th of September, I returned to one of my favorite places in Wisconsin. The Green Lake Christian Conference Center, where I attended a Writing Retreat with nine other Christian women.

          I found contentment in the familiar surroundings, even if we stayed in one of the huge houses they have for rent, instead of the hotel where I’ve had a room before.

          It was great having my own spacious room and private bathroom.

          I didn’t get as much writing done as I had hoped, but it revitalized me to walk along the lake and explore the grounds.

          The weather was dreary most of the days I was there.

          But nothing beats sunrise over a lake. These are a quarter of the pictures I took that morning.

          But who can look at a sunrise and not believe that God painted it just for us.

Jesus Always Wins - Val's Story, Chap 20

God rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us safe into the kingdom of His dear Son. (Colossians 1:13, Good News Translation)

 How many times over the years had I lain awake in bed at night, wondering where Val was, when she’d be home, how she’d get home? How many times in recent years would I check her location on Google Maps before going to sleep and again at 2 a.m. only to find she was still at the bar? How many times did I wait for the phone to ring or the doorbell to ring?

          The weekend before she took her life, she had been invited to a baby shower out of town with my husband and me. Instead of coming with us, though, she planned to go camping with her boyfriend. But then rain popped up in the forecast, so they stayed home and went to the bar instead. On the way home, Val got stopped for her third OWI.

          Instead of it being a wake-up call, the drunk driving ticket only reinforced her need to drink, and she spiraled out of control. When I talked to Dr. Katie a few weeks later, she told me that Val’s blood alcohol that night had been 0.2. The legal limit is 0.08, and a level of 0.3 to 0.4 is lethal in most people. 

          That Friday night, the demon in her head, which was pushing her to drink and telling her that her life might as well be over, told her to pick up the gun and pull the trigger. He thought that he had won, that he could take her away with him.

          But after an agonizing Saturday of making phone calls, I was in the shower the next morning when God came to me and said, “NO!”

          He clearly told me that the devil had not won, that in that final instant, Jesus slayed those demons that had been wearing her down and announced to Satan that he was done. And Jesus took her gently in His arms and carried her to heaven.

          Why He couldn’t have just carried her back to me, I do not know.

          The only thing I do know is that my baby girl had a heart for caring for others, immeasurable love, a spirit which was a little wild, and a smile more beautiful than sunrise over Lake Superior. I know that the devil was after her for half of her life because he knew her amazing qualities, and that scared him, so he kept assaulting her. But in the end, Satan never wins.  

          This is how I have faced each new day moving forward: Satan never wins. Jesus always does, even if it’s not in our time or in our way.

          And over the following weeks and months, I would need to keep returning to that resolve.

August 22, 2025, 11:55 pm - Val's Story, Chap 19

“Was it a drunk driving accident?” was the first question I asked the two officers standing in my yard. With Val’s years of drinking and the two OWIs she’d gotten in the past, a tiny part of my brain had expected the police to show up one night with that news.

          “We can’t tell you what happened, but we know it wasn’t a car accident,” the uniformed man answered.

          “Did she drink herself to death?” That was always the second possibility I thought of, especially after spending that week with her in Africa, where the amount of alcohol she drank daily would have killed most people.

          “I don’t know, but here is the number for the officer who is working on her case.” He handed me a slip of paper, one that had been ripped from one of those small spiral notebooks cops always write in on TV shows.

          “Okay.” What else could I say at that moment?

          “If there’s anything we can do for you, please call our department.” I think he gave me his business card, but I don’t remember seeing it after that. I only remember that slip of paper with that phone number on it.

 ~~~

 “Unfortunately, it looks like she killed herself,” was what the officer on the phone told me once I told him who I was, who my daughter was. Probably not exactly what he said, but it was the last thing I expected.

          Jim and I had crawled into our queen-size bed with the cat and the dog after the county deputies left the house that Friday night. With trembling hands and waves of nausea, I had called the number on the slip of paper.

          “How?” I asked next.

          “She shot herself with a small-caliber handgun.” Again, I can’t recall how he phrased it, but that’s what I heard, that’s what my beautiful, crazy, alcoholic daughter had done.

          He gave me the number to the coroner’s office so I could get more details.        

          Dr. Katie took my call and was the sweetest stranger I talked to during the ensuing three-month ordeal of finalizing her death certificate. I asked her for every detail, telling her I worked in the medical field, I knew anatomy, and had seen blood and guts. I can’t share the specifics that she told us.

She did ask if Val was an organ donor. I looked over at my husband, my cell phone on speaker. He shrugged and nodded at the same time.

          “I’m sure she was. That’s the kind of person she was.”

          “Good. Then I’ll ask that team to call you. As you probably know from working in the medical field, they can only harvest a few of her organs at this point, but they still use her skin, bones, and all kinds of tissue.” Yes, Dr. Katie told me what those tissues were, and I have the list in the big envelope that the place sent me. “I’ll have them call you yet tonight if that’s okay.”

          It was after one a.m. by then. “We’re not going anywhere, and we won’t be going back to sleep.”

          Nearly an hour later, the organ and tissue procurement office called. He asked all the questions that are asked before a routine blood donation, and many, many more. I was on the phone with him until three a.m. He said that everything they harvested from Val’s body could affect the lives of up to one hundred people. And that they would do it with the utmost compassion.

          I believed him, but I also believed that as precious as my daughter’s body was, it was now only her body, a shell. Her spirit and soul had moved on. And as much as I wanted to believe that she had moved on to heaven, my heart ached for confirmation. And for peace. 

The Green Plastic Deck Chair - Val's Story, Chap 18

The lights in the yard woke me up first. I looked at the clock – 11:53 pm.

          I was rolling out of bed when I heard the Ring doorbell. When we installed the new doorbells months before, Jim had picked the sound of a choo-choo train. He thought it was so cute, and I didn’t care at the time. 

          I looked out the bedroom window and saw two county sheriff’s cars in our driveway, their lights flashing. My stomach immediately tied itself in a knot.

          I grabbed my bathrobe and headed to the living room, closing the door behind me so the dog wouldn’t get out. Jim had just gotten out of his recliner, where he usually slept because of his ongoing shoulder pain. I remember so many details, but I don’t remember what we said to each other. I’m pretty sure we didn’t say anything.

          One of us unlocked the front door, and I was the first one out.

          Two officers stood there, one from each car: a man and a woman.

          “Ma’am, I’m Officer Somebody-or-other,” the man introduced himself, or maybe he didn’t. I didn’t want or need the formalities.

          “Are you Christine Kincaid?” he asked.

          “Yes.”

          “Your daughter is Valerie Confer?”

          I knew this had to be about Val, my problem child, but I answered with a meek “yes” again.

          “Why don’t you have a seat?” He pointed to the deck chair that was against the house under the picture window.

          We’d never had a chair there before. But since early summer, when my brother’s dementia forced us to put him in assisted living, we’d been cleaning at his place. When we got home from working at his nasty, smelly house, I’d leave the bag of cleaning supplies on that chair outside, tucking my work boots under it. When Nick decided he wanted to buy his uncle’s house, I let him worry about cleaning. I put away the bag and my boots, but the chair remained.

          I obeyed the officer and sat in that green plastic chair, Jim standing next to me, his hand on my shoulder.

          “I am so sorry to inform you that your daughter passed away earlier this evening.” I do remember those exact words.

          The next day, still in shock, Jim and I had a conversation about that chair, wondering why it had been there and where the officer would have directed me if there hadn’t been anything to sit on. Did they teach them to always try to get the mom to sit down before giving her the worst news of her life?

I made Hubby move that deck chair away from the front of the house a few days later. I only got around to spray painting it blue a few weeks ago. 
Oh, but I made him change the doorbell ring tune that first afternoon. Every time someone came to the front door, and I heard the choo-choo train, I had a trauma attack. 

Angels and Demons - Val's Story, Chap 17

Shortly after the puppies were settled in their new homes, Val met a nice young man. He had a steady job with benefits, was a hard worker, and had the patience of a saint. He also had a black cocker spaniel poodle mix. Before long, three energetic black dogs had taken over her house and large yard.

          By the following spring, her boyfriend bought a large, beautiful travel trailer, and sometime after that, he started moving in with her. She had gotten a new job the previous fall, working from home four days a week and in the office one day. The benefits were great. So many things seemed to be going well for my angel, but those demons were unrelenting.

          On the Fourth of July weekend, they went camping along Lake Superior, and she invited Jim and me to join them for one day. In addition to their three dogs, they had brought her boyfriend’s teenage niece.

          The weather was beautiful, comfortably warm with the sun shining off the Great Lake, waves lapping at the beach. After a walk along the shore with all the dogs, including the Corgi we had adopted in Februray, we returned to their campsite. Jim and I took seats in the camp chairs, and Val offered us a beverage. We had brought our own – bottles of water and orange juice. Val, naturally, was drinking a mixed drink.

          I asked if she had any extra food, as we hadn’t eaten lunch. She invited me into the camper and started pulling containers out of the refrigerator.

          “Oh, I gotta show you something,” she said, reaching into the area his niece had claimed for her stuff. “We went to a craft show yesterday and look what she bought.” She held up a cross necklace and a coin purse that had “Jesus” embroidered on it.

          “Nice,” I answered with a smile. “Maybe she’ll rub off on you.”

          Val sighed, not with the disgust she often showed when I brought up my faith, but more with disappointment in herself.

          “All the things I’ve done in my life? God will never forgive me anyway.”

          Wow! I had not expected that. I’d been waiting years for the door to open, for a chance to remind her what Jesus did for anyone who turned their life over to Him and accepted Him as their Savior. And for her not to throw my beliefs back in my face.

          “Oh, Val,” I knew I was treading on thin ice and didn’t want to blow. “Jesus died on the cross for all our sins. There is no sin too great that you can’t be forgiven. You only have to ask God for forgiveness.”

          She turned back to the food she was rearranging on the camper’s small countertop.

          “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s a lot.”

          I didn’t know what to say after that. I only prayed that she let Jesus into her heart and accepted His forgiveness.

Puppies! - Val's Story, Chap 16

And so, Val fell down the hole again.

          It wasn’t just the death of her youngest dog; it’s never just one thing. She was frustrated with her job, feeling it was going nowhere. She wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with her AA sponsor, so she had already started skipping meetings. Since she had been sober three months, once she got her three-month coin, she thought it was cause for celebration. Even after those three months of meetings, the only way she knew to celebrate was to open a bottle.

I don’t remember much about Val’s life after that for the next year. I had injured my back on the first of April, four weeks before Bleu died, and I had a hard time getting around for many months after that.

          I texted Val regularly and called at least once a week. She swore she had her drinking under control, that she could handle it, and that there was nothing wrong with having too much to drink on the weekends.

          One weekend in July, she booked an Airbnb with Buddy and some friends. The friends bailed on her, but she went anyway. At the last minute, she invited me to join her. I had a funeral to go to Saturday morning, but promised I’d drive the two hours to the cabin as soon as I could. She asked me to meet at a bar and grill a few miles from the rental, and I thought, “Great, here we go, my daughter will be drunk all weekend.”      

          When I got there, we decided to eat lunch on the deck outside the bar, and to my surprise, she ordered a soda with her meal. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, she can handle her drinking.

          We had a nice time together, hiking through different parks with Buddy, watching movies that night, and laughing like we used to.

          But that darn hole was still there.

~~~

She got a part-time job bartending at a different bar, this one much closer to her house. Working from home during the day was still hard on her, having no one to talk to in person.

          She’d always had roommates to help her with the bills. Even when she was married, it seemed like a friend was crashing with them, paying what rent they could. Unfortunately, many of these roommates were unsavory. Not only did they not all pay rent, but they didn’t help with chores around the house, and some of them would supply her with street drugs, as if the alcohol wasn’t enough for her.

          And the boyfriends. None were as bad as the one she kicked out of her house during our last trip to Africa. But still, this Momma worried nonstop about her choices.

          Easter morning, 2024, my phone rang earlier than expected.

          “Guess what?” Val’s voice met my ear.

          “You’re going to Easter services at church this morning?” A mom could continue to hope.

          “You’re so funny, Mom. No, I have puppies!”

          Well, I guess that’s better than announcing she had herpes.

          It was a convoluted story, which to this day, I’m not sure I got straight. But somehow, she ended up with three ten-week-old mixed-breed puppies that no one else could take. Of course, I dressed and drove right down to her house.

They were in poor health, and she was never quite sure what had happened to them, but she suspected they had gotten into some chemicals at their original owner’s house. They were so thin and weak that they needed help eating. We hand-fed the largest one, the only boy, and used a syringe to get nourishment into the two small girls.

Val committed to getting them all healthy, getting up several times a night to feed them and cleaning up their messes. Within a few days, they were all eating on their own and trotting around in the backyard.

          Val decided to keep the boy, whom she named Max. But she had to find homes for the two girls. We had put down Dino, our faithful mutt, in January the previous year, and though I hadn’t wanted another dog, I couldn’t turn away these pups.

Luckily, the person who took the smallest pup also decided he wanted the other girl. I wasn’t heartbroken; my husband and I really didn't need another dog, and months later she had grown larger than her brother Max. He turned out to be a handsome boy who looked like a black Golden Retriever.

I thought he’d also be a much-needed distraction for Val. She took good care of him and kept loving on her older dog, Buddy, but nothing released her from the demons that held her in that hole.

Bleu's Story - Val's Story, Chap 15, part 2

At the cabin up north in 2020

In the summer of 2022, Val’s dog Bleu had been diagnosed with blastomycosis. It was a long, expensive process to get the husky/lab mix healthy again. He lost a lot of weight and was lethargic for weeks before the antifungal meds kicked in. It can take more than six months for blasto to clear anyone’s system.

After he’d been on medication for a month or two, the vet would insist he come back in for lab work before they would refill his prescription. The drugs themselves were costly enough, but the vet bill with the labs was over four hundred dollars per visit.

After a few rounds, with Bleu completely symptom-free, Val stopped his meds. I told her several times I would pay the bill, but her bull-headedness reared its ugly head.

“The vet just wants to make money,” she answered.

The dog did fine for a long time. We all thought that surely the infection was cleared.

Then in April, close to three months after Val found sobriety, Bleu developed a few pus-filled nodules in several places on his body. After doing some research online, Val thought it could be the return of blasto. She called the vet, who said they couldn’t refill his prescription until he was seen and had a full exam with labs.

She opted to monitor the lesions and drain them when they were irritated, keeping them clean and watching for other symptoms.

Within a few weeks, he was lethargic again, not eating, and losing weight.

She called me one Sunday afternoon in a panic over his condition.

When I got there, I saw a skeleton of the once vibrant dog panting on the floor. “We gotta take him to the emergency vet right now.”

Looking back, I’m sure Val was in denial, thinking that maybe this was just a nightmare and she’d wake up. Or that she’d been imagining his condition and he’d suddenly spring back to good health.

Somehow, he was able to drag his weak body into her vehicle, and we drove to the animal ER just a few miles away.

He obediently followed us to the door on wobbly legs, but then veered off to pee in some bushes. Anyone else, including Val, would think that was a good sign. But with my medical background, I knew it meant something else – his body was shutting down.

The automatic doors to the building whooshed open, and we coaxed Bleu inside. But just as he started through the open door, he collapsed, and the stupid door tried to shut on him.

Only two scenes from my life continue to haunt me. The sight of Bleu lying there as Val screamed at his side, while those automatic doors just kept trying to close on them.

The other event was a few years before when one of the dogs killed one of our cats, and I was the first one to see her little wilted body. No blood, just a shell of fur. I couldn’t stop screaming.

But there I was years later, running into the vet’s office yelling for help.

He was gone before they got out to the door with a gurney. The staff still loaded him up and whisked him off to see what they could do.

I've had longer nights in my life, but few as painful. Holding my baby girl as tightly as I could as she sobbed uncontrollably, waiting for two of her friends to arrive for additional support.

We finally got back to her house and had to face her other dog, Buddy.

Dogs know. They know so much more than we give them credit for. They are the salve for our broken hearts, but how do we ever mend their hearts?

Bleu as a baby in 2017, with Granma.

With his big brother, Buddy

Taking a ride

The pack in 2017 - Buddy, Wesley, Bleu and Dino

And again the next year - Wesley, Dino, Bleu and Buddy. 
Only Buddy is left. So sad. 

Just an Old Table

           I was going to continue with Val’s story - we’re on the second part of chapter 15. But honestly, it’s a very sad story, and I have other memories closer to the front of my heart right now.

          When I was a kid, for as long as I can remember, an antique wooden table sat in my parents’ basement. It was solid, with five chunky legs and a ledge on its underside, perfect for hiding things. My sister Pat and I spent hours at that table, coloring, drawing, or plotting our next adventure. Sometimes friends would come over, and we’d all cluster around the table for snacks or games.

The table really is there under the table cloth and all that stuff. This is the only picture I have it from back then. 

          After Dad died and Mom sold the house, she had no room for the table in her new mobile home, so we brought it to my basement and tucked it in a corner. For a long time, we fed our cats on it and otherwise stored junk on it. Our basement flooded a few times, and those chunky wooden feet cracked; a few of them eventually fell apart.

          When Val bought her second house seven years ago, she finally had a dining room and wanted a cheap table. My parents’ old wooden table, that no longer had much of a finish and only two solid feet, would do just fine. Val and her husband at the time stripped it, stained it, glued the feet back together, and turned it into the beauty it once was. - which was before my time.

          A couple of weeks ago, the table came back home to live with me again. This time, in my dining room, where I plan to love it all over again, for even more reasons than before.