MEMORY LANE........

Where do you start a walk through memories? Do you begin with the joyful occasions like in the beginning of my real life? My seventeenth birthday party where I proposed to my girlfriend asking her to marry me and watched her face expectantly. You halfway expecting her to say no but praying for a yes ................. The yes word is the one I received that day.

Do you start with these events and work your way forwards? Or do you start at the end of the life you had known since you were fifteen. Tell of the cocoon of love and companionship that had engulfed you your entire adult life. How you witnessed the ending of such a precious life. Someone who had done nothing but good her entire life for everyone she came in contact with.

Of how you held her close in yours arms praying for the eyes to flutter open just one last time so that you could tell her she is your soulmate and say you love her, just one more time, just one more.... You sit next to the hospital bed and do the count down along with the heart monitor as it drops, 19...15...11...9...3...1...flat-line_______________

You realise that all the time in the world is not enough to prepare you for the reality... you are really, really alone. The family is there, your 2 kids are there, but the room is empty......

Do you start here and go backwards?

Well, I was born and raised in and around Atlanta, Georgia. The only time I was out of the States, other than on vacation and such was my stint in the US Army but we will get back to that in a moment. When I was fifteen, I lied about my age and started working so as to relieve my Dad of the effort to provide for my brother and I. And as a result of that position at the Krystal Restaurant in downtown Atlanta, I met the love of my life.

On one of those occasions that you have to work and can't get out of it for an important appointment with your best friend and the theater playing a got to see movie. So the next four hours he spent wandering around killing time until I get off. In the course of staying in the vicinity he happened upon his girlfriend and her best friend doing research for a term paper at the main library a couple of blocks from me at the restaurant.

When I finally got off we all met for introductions as I had not met his girlfriend up to now. Rockie and I went to school together only every other year. My mother kept me one year and then allowed my dad to have me the other one. This was the year that I stayed with my dad and we only got together then by commuting. It was a very cold day in January. The buildings grouped where the wind whipped between them didn't help the situation. Jane was wrapped up like an Eskimo, no visible indication of the vision in the coat that was pulled tight from the fake fur at the neck level to the boots at ground level.

Nonetheless, when the opportunity presented itself, I pulled Rockie aside and told him that the girl with Brenda, his girlfriend, was the girl I was going to marry. Needless to say this was somewhat of a surprise and was met with the usual ridicule. Being my best friend, later, after they had gone back to finish the assignment that brought them to Atlanta in the first place and we had gone to see the movie he agreed to get Jane's phone number from his girlfriend.

Two days later I called her... She didn't remember who I was. So much for my making an impression on her, huh? But we talked and eventually agreed to meet. She would be the only woman I could even imagine being my wife. Her parents?.. Now that is another story.

After they had determined that I was going to be more than a passing phase, well, let's just say they had seen and identified the enemy.. She was the middle child with an older sister, Rebecca and younger brother, Tommy.

Jane from Germany to death.........

Jane was diagnosed with a brain tumor while I was stationed in Germany. She was over there only 7 weeks and was medi-vac to Walter Reed for surgery. The operation was successful. We were told that she had a very small piece left that couldn't be removed as it was in the canal where the 5 major nerves go from the spinal cord into the operational part of her brain.

Since they could not get the kernel the maximum dose of radiation was given, 4800 rads, with the expectation of a total recovery. We were told that if nothing happened within 5 years she would be home free. Seven years later it invaded her throat as it had mutated into a tumor that grew like a weed. In the next 6 years she endured 7 brain operations with each taking a major facility. First the hearing in her right side, a constant roaring sound in her right ear, the partial use of her right shoulder, the vision control of her right eye, stroke on the right side of her face then on her right side, ability to walk without a walker, then the inability to walk because of right side balance, well you get the picture.

I saw on the news one evening that a new procedure being used in Stockholm, Sweden, with a 95% (+ / -) success rate for the type of tumor Jane was suffering from. I was going to take Jane there and so called the station to find out how to get in contact with the surgical group doing this procedure. What they were doing was instead of cutting out a tumor they were simply locating the veins feeding the tumor, tying off those veins/arteries and letting the tumor starve. Simple yes? I was willing to do anything I could. The neurosurgeon had told me she had less than 2 years to live 1 1/2 years earlier. I had forbidden him telling Jane any of this... why did she need this information? One of us was enough.

The news station told me the surgical team had moved to the U.S. and were at the Univ. Of W.Virginia, so I got intouch and had approval for her to get the procedure done.

We went there and she was operated on... the operation was a total success. They killed the tumor, but she also was infected with a viral infection that is only caught in an operating theater. Sudimonus is only present there and has a 98% mortality rate. They cured her and killed her with the same operation.

I had her medi-vac to Emory University Hospital so that family could be present. The kids were not told until 2 days prior to her death, I saw no reason for it being told to them earlier. After all they had been through this with their mother 7 times before and she went home. This time I told them that it would be a little different........

She would be going home, just not with us....

The family were with me when she died. I was holding her in my arms as the heart monitor went to flat line. I asked the family to leave and I escorted her to the funeral home van downstairs when they arrived. You see, I had promised Jane I would never leave her and I didn't all the way to there.

When she was in the hospital for an operation I never left her side. I had work delivered to me and picked up the following morning and I took showers and meals in her room with her. Jane was afraid to be alone, who wouldn't after so many operations, so I never left her side. The hospital visits were 2/3 months in length, so the visits were extensive. I slept at night in a chair pulled to the bedside with her hand on my arm so that all she had to do was squeeze my arm to get me awake and aware of her needing something. The nurses were even allowing me to give her medications to Jane so as to free them up for other patients. They knew that my attention was not to be beat by them. Also she and I knew them by name after a while anyway.

As I said, I never left her side, all the way to the end.

It gave me a chance to find closure to this ordeal. Jane never asked for anything I was not able to give to her, nothing. She was cured and killed in July, 1989. She went into the coma that she would not wake from thinking that she had been cured and just going through the recovery stage...........

I knew my wife was leaving at any time and invited the entire family to be in the room for the moment approaching so as to say goodbye at the end. It's a moment I've never regretted but have hated since.

I've never regretted letting her brother and my sister, who we had raised from the age of 9. We continually placed them together because Jane and I thought they made a good couple. This was done until they fell in love and married.

Nor her mother, who would never come to see her for fear that I would ask for some money to help with the bills that mount up from 11 brain operations in a 4 year period.

On many nights I would hold her in my arms as she cried asking me where her mother was and why she would not come to see her. What can you say to your soulmate in a moment like that? But it was Jane's mother afterall. She had brought Jane into this world and I could'nt refuse to let her see Jane leave. Then there was my 'baby' baby sister who thought it was a real treat to spend the summer with her big brother and his wife and kids, since the kids and her were only 4 or 5 years apart. My son and daughter had every right of course.

Angela had taken care of her mom as I had to work every hour I could to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. She kept the books and paid the bills also. No one in our entire family wanted me anywhere near them. So I listed a deposit twice instead of once... on more than one occasion.... well no one's perfect. My son thought he needed to be there for her, but to be there for me too. His Mom and Dad had been married for 20 years. Not too bad for parents not yet 38.

So we all watched the heart monitor counting the heartbeats per minute. It rose to 260 then came steadily down to 19, 11, 5, 2, 1... straight line. The staff nurse said that almost everyone will have that last surge. It's as if the soul fights off that seperation from splitting with the body one last time.

Everyone had the opportunity to say goodbye and I love you at the end, and I held her for the last time here on earth. I said I've never regretted it and I haven't. I've said I hated it and I did. That the chance was given to them, I hoped would ease the pain somewhat, and I'm sure it did. I hated it because it is such a private moment, to my way of thinking. The kids, of course, but for me it would be the first moment in my adult life that I would be alone, really alone, without her by my side.

To be able to say I love you or hug her close, or just to look into her eyes and see my reflection in them. That reflection was from her heart and I knew it was filled with me as she was in mine. So I'll bear witness to it now. If any have someone that is dear to their heart, tell 'em today. Everyone has 20/20 vision on a subject just as soon as it's passed you by. It's awful easy to say, the next time I see them, I'm going to tell what a joy or blessing they are to me. I was blessed, if blessed you want to call it.

I knew the end was near. I got to sit there and watch the seconds tick by. I forbade the doctor to tell anyone her condition and I waited until she had gone into her coma and all hope of her recovering again before letting my kids know. They were aware 2 days prior to her passing. Some agree, some don't, but my reply was that they would have the rest of their lives to miss and grieve over her dying. Let them think this was like the other brain tumor operations she had received and came home. With this one she would be going home.. just not ours this time..............

I've not told this for any other reason than to let the rest of you know that, I knew in advance what was about to happen any moment. Most don't have the fore knowledge of what's coming down the tracks. Give them that hug and kiss. It takes so little effort and could possibly have to last you a lifetime......

MY POEM FOR JANE

Good night Jane

Her rocking chair, will rock no more,

Her song will go unsung,

The final chapters of her book.....

Will they be left undone?

The greatest joy in her life,

Was the beauty of the morn...

The dew upon the rosebud...

Just as the day was born...

The springtime in her winter sun.....

A prayer to start the day...

The praise she gave the Lord above...

For helping her to make her way...

The final phase, the finished part...

Was left within our care...

The last request, to seal her life....

Was to meet our Lord in prayer...

I sing her song, and shed a tear....

While praising the Lord above....

For sending me such a wonderful wife....

With a heart so full of love....

Take care of my heart honey.

It's been yours,

Since the first moment I laid eyes on you.....

Goodnight Little Precious,

David