“Where’s the learning?” I think this was something I picked up at the start of my shift from top cop to priest-pastor. After seminary (25+ years ago) a wise bishop, Roger White, sent this cop who was in the process of transforming for a year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education at Meriter Hospital before he would ordain me. That’s where I met my best friend, Jeff Billerbeck. He was my pastoral supervisor for a year (I think he had his hands full with me!). After my training, we agreed to be friends and I have played a major role in his life as he has in mine over the past quarter century.
So, what am I learning through the most severe pain of loss I have ever experienced in my 80+ years? After being present at a lot of deaths I have learned some things. But talking about death and experiencing it first hand with the love of your life is another thing. Sabine’s death has tested me to my limits.
To say your relationship to a partner, a mate, was special is one thing. I had experienced loving relationships with women in my past — but nothing, no nothing like I experienced with Sabine. I am so lucky, so blessed to have been able to live with this woman and love her (almost) selflessly. Somehow, God chose me to be her husband.
Sabine taught me, no transformed me, to be a better person (truly). Years ago, a psychotherapist friend of ours warned us that we were “joined at the hip.” And we replied, “so what?” Joined-at-the-hip we were. (Modern psychotherapy aside!) Yet, this meant that the danger her was when one died, the other might also die.
You see, I really learned real love from her. I didn’t do a very good job in two previous marriages. I was career-oriented and career orientation does little to help improve a spousal relationship. Most people have one or the other.This time, I chose the latter.
Twenty-eight year old Sabine said to 43 year old David, “If I choose to be with you, you must get control of your work hours.” And I did. From the moment I fell in love with her during a group dinner following her graduation from the police academy in 1980, she mattered — and she mattered above all else; even my job as chief of police.
I was willing to quit my job, but Sabine said, no, one of us has to leave and let it be me. I’ll find a new job. And she did. First as the city bicycle-pedestrian coordinator in the transportation department and then as a police officer in the state capitol. (She retired 20 years later having attained the rank of captain.) But I still remember her tearfully telling me about turning in her equipment at the Madison PD. Like many women who joined Madison police, it was a transforming and empowering experience.
From 1980 to 1993, she influenced most of my work (especially those years during Madison’s quality initiative). In our marriage (which is another crazy, fun, adventure story) she became my very best friend, passionate lover, and muse. At her marriage a gave her a book of 151 hand-written courtship poems.
I had never met a woman like her. We adopted three great kids — she loved them — but (sorry kids) she always let me know that she loved me best because after the children grew up, she still wanted us to be a team. Oh, a team we were as we approached life’s problems.
After I met Sabine, no one else ever would ever cause my mind or hands to wander. She filled up everyone of my emotional and physical needs for forty years. So, that’s why I cared, loved her like I did. And I choose to think that I did the same for her.
To be able to care for her those days and years before she died; to understand that her request and decision to die well was that I would be able to give an enormous, love-filled gift to her — my final thanks for the most incredible, satisfying, remarkable relationship in my life!
I was surprised to realize today, New Year’s Day, that a week had passed since my lover had died. It seems like yesterday. Those few days after she decided not to go to the hospital without me being with her (due to Covid-19 restrictions) and to cease medical treatment (chemotherapy and dialysis) after a 12 year struggle, was the greatest test in my life to be able to practice what I had learned and how now to best love her.
You see, I concentrated on death and dying issues during my residency and in my practice as a priest. I knew most of us avoided talking about death… we were “whistlers;” tip-toeing past the presence of death in our lives. I became a strong advocate of making final arrangements and using hospice care.
Afte all, is not death a part of life? I often said (and preached), “I see that you’re in a committed, loving relationship. Are you prepared the close the eyes of your loved one? For one of you will most likely die before the other.”
How did I prepare? What did I learn? I learned to prepare myself, my mind, my relationship with God, to be the sort of person who lovingly prepares to be able to “close the eyes” of a loved one.
Twelve years ago (almost to the day), Sabine received a crushing medical diagnosis, a blood cancer (multiple myeloma) had been found and, on top of that, it had sudddenly wiped out her kidneys. In addition to a stem cell transplant and chemotherapy, she would have to undergo dialysis. So we decided to train to learn how to do a better form of dialysis — hemodialysis, five days a week, in our home. Thanks to modern technology there existed a portable “magic machine.” And as me serving as her caregiver we could do it together! With her enthusiasm and vivacious essence, we prolonged her life far beyond the 18 months to two years she was expected to live.
She never let the cancer negatively affect her life as we travelled with that 80 pound machine tovacations in Florida, hiking in Glacier Park, on a train to San Antonio, in a camper, and on our boat. Her motto was “carpe dime;” seize the day! And seize we did!
And so when Sabine decided to cease treatment, the end came quickly, a few days — and only one of those days in formal hospice care. The day before Christmas Eve Sabine was very tired. I had to assist her in moving and toileting. She just wanted to sleep, In those few days before her death she would often go to bed in the afternoon and awake 18 hours later. During the night I would check her breathing and touch her body in case she was running a fever. So many nights over the years I did these acts to reassure me that she was still alive.
When Sabine’s death came, I had just moved her to our bed. We had, a hour before. received an oxygen machine. Just in time as she needed it as her breathing labored. We had just received oral morphine from the pharmacy, but I was told to call the nurse before I gave it to her. I called.
I went back to our bed and helped her adjust the oxygen. Suddenly, she gasped, and threw her head back, I checked her pulse (and restrained myself from doing CPR, something I had one to save three other persons in the past). She did not want me to resuscitate her. With difficulty, I honored her request.
I knew that my learning needed to kick in as I closed her eyes. Just the past week I read a moving article in “Christian Century” reminding ud that beauty can be found in tragedy. I was realized that it is true — I could create beauty in the face of this hollowing, gut-renching tragedy.
And so, after closing her eyes, I laid her down. I sobbed and sobbed. I kissed her face and lips. I turned and lit the candle in our bedroom. Put on Gregorian chant music. I got a warm bowl of water and washed her naked body. I dressed her, read a liturgy for the dying from the Book of Common Prayer, and I anointed her with holy oil and kissed her again. I burned incense, placed a rose on her breast, and sat with her.
Then it was time for our scheduled online worship. I quietly joined our congregation’s Christmas mass through Zoom. Earlier this morning I had asked my best friend and fellow pastor, Jeff, to leading this worship from his home just down the road from me. Only a couple of hours earlier, he and his wife, Bonnie, were with me just after Sabine died and now he was filling in for me on this most sacred night of Christendom.
I was able to keep Sabine’s with me overnight — a vigil of crying and singing a song that I had started to sing to her a few days earlier — “You Are My Sunshine.” Soon morning came. The morticians arrived. I asked them to please blow the candle out when they left. Our dog, Mocha, and I then took a tear-filled, sad, yet thankful, walk in our woods on a trail Sabine and I had walked daily. I was thankful I did what she asked me to do — a final gift.
I was found beauty in the face of loss and tragedy and I was able to fulfill the request Sabine made from me at the start of her illness; that when the end came I would be with her at our farm we called “New Journey.” And thus it is and always was.
Forty years ago, we purchased this land. On Christmas Day, I walked up the trail to the spot where we celebrated our purchase that day. We carried two glasses and a bottle of champagne with us. I stood this morning on the spot we celebrated that day by making love in those woods.
This is my story and this is my song. This is what I learned in my life with Sabine. I hope it will help you with your learning and that one day, you too will be prepared to close the eyes of your loved one and find beauty in tragedy.
God bless you and may God give me the strength to live without her physical presence and continue to be the man she always loved. Amen.
