Down the Home Stretch - Entry 16 in the story of my sister and me

Shoveling snow out of the road in 1961, just about the time I was born. 

Have you heard what cross-country coaches say? 
The first miles you run on your legs, the last mile you run on your guts. 
Pat Loehmer 

Outside our parents' house in 1986. I don't remember seeing this picture before until I found it in Mom's old pictures a month ago. 

June 18, 1999 

            “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” I read from her Bible at the side of her bed. My sister Pat had become unresponsive, her breathing labored but steady.

            “Keep reading,” Mom instructed me. “They say that your hearing is the last thing to go.”

We were keeping a night-time vigil, something I never in a million years thought I would be doing, there at Pat’s bedside in the nursing home. Just being in the nursing home was beyond anything I could fathom. My sister Pat? Bubbly, full of life, a pistol who never stopped shooting, never stopped working. How could she be lying in that nursing home bed, pale and gaunt, no longer able to speak or barely move.

            “He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake."

            Why would God do this to my sister, my best friend? Why did she have to suffer so much, fighting for so long? If He wanted her in heaven, why didn’t He take her suddenly, painlessly? And why can’t He send a miracle? Right here and right now?

            The doctors said that it was a miracle that she had lived for six years with this kind of an aggressive cancer. Really? Because I didn’t see it as a miracle, I saw it as six years of my sister dying, when she should have been living.

            “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

            But she had lived those six years. She and I had gone on camping trips, sometimes with Judy, sometimes with my kids. She had stood up at the wedding of her best friend from college. She had been the photographer for my second wedding. She and her husband along with me and mine had flown to Las Vegas for a long weekend. She had continued working as long as she could.

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over.”

            I looked up at Mom and she gestured that I should keep reading. I was out of ideas though. Sure there were many more chapters in the book of Psalms, David’s outpouring of his faith in God and that all things would turn out right through Him. But I just couldn’t do it.

            The next morning, my sister Judy joined the vigil. When her nurse checked on Pat, she nodded towards her bed as she left the room. I don’t remember if she actually said it or not, but the words that came into my head were, “it’s time.” Nurses who have seen enough know when it is time.

            We gathered around Pat and watched her lungs fill with air for the last time. The air slowly ebbed from her, as if the oxygen was leaving not only her lungs but her fingers and toes and even her pores.

            A sob escaped from Mom, and Judy probably reacted as well. All I did was watch that frail chest, waiting for it to rise again, willing it to rise. Not taking my eyes from that slight lump under the sheet.

            “Come on, Pat, come on, you can do it. Take another breath.”

            It never happened.

My kids with their Aunt Patti, in April of 1993, four months before her diagnosis

(Don’t despair! The story’s not over. Be sure to check back in on Friday for the remarkable ending to a life well-lived.)