Tenmile Cemetery
Kaite and I went to Tenmile Cemetery several times. I thought she was interested in the history while we wandered through the graves but it wasn’t about history. Her mom was buried there and in her quiet way, she was showing me where she wanted to be buried. One day we went to the homestead that her father and stepmom had lived on. Around the house, the flower beds were lush with spring color, including lilies of the valley she loved. Later I planted lily of the valley bulbs to help me remember her and our love of flowers. Katie’s step-sister Syliva and her husband Brock came to Oregon to visit and meet her girls Ruby and Molly. They offered for the girls to come to Australia “Down Under” if the need arose. It would.
I got a call from her while she was in Salem, she been able to get her chemo in Portland and then go back home on the same day. She had totaled her car while driving to Roseburg after an afternoon chemo session. She admitted she didn’t wait long enough in the hospital for the sedative to wear off. I drove to Salem to pick her up and we stopped by the wrecking yard to see her totaled car. Now she had a big problem she had no way to drive to and from the hospital. Cleo stepped in and gave her a car, not to borrow, but to own. Cleo once told me that whenever she would get bored, she would ask Jesus if he had a job for her. What a good way to fight boredom. What a way to show love.
One day Katie and I were walking on our green, living room carpeting and I saw a string and picked it up. She commented that she didn’t even see it but I had. You never know when someone is watching what you do.
After her transplant, she needed to be close to OHSU to get her regular checkups. Since her immune system was so compromised the smallest infection could be fatal. Her self-care assignment was to take her temperature regularly. If it was elevated, she was to go to the hospital immediately to receive IV antibiotics. That happened over and over again. She was getting tired from her long battle with cancer. She ended up finding an apartment for herself and the girls in Vancouver, Washington where the rent was cheaper than in Portland. Ruby found it hard to make new friends in her new school, but Molly did okay. She had a girlfriend who was a runaway. Her friend would “park” at the apartment, going back and forth from there and to her boyfriend’s place. Katie didn’t need that drama, but it came with the territory.
After two years of being in and out of hospitals, she was getting weary, mind, body, and soul. Easter was coming up, and she asked us to come and visit her. Dave felt the weekend was too busy for us to be gone. I wished I had insisted we go, it would have been the last time I saw her alive. She mentioned that she had gotten a spider bite but didn’t want to go to the hospital. However, she knew she was sick she went there seriously ill and had to be admitted.
I got a call from a doctor at OHSU that her death was imminent. Our pastor and his wife invited me to ride with them to Portland. They diddled and dawdled around, not hurrying; stopping in Salem to shop. I was really frustrated because the news we heard was that she was failing and we needed to get there soon. When we arrived at the hospital, Katie had already passed away. Everyone, the pastor and his wife, and Ruby and Molly seemed nonchalant; to some, her death seemed to be no big deal. Her girls told me that they had been grieving for over two years already.
A nurse near the hall where I was standing saw me crying and asked if I was Katie’s friend and if I wanted to see her body. I did, alone in my grief. She had what looked like blood blisters all over her arms. The nurse explained it was because of the spread of the blood infection from a simple spider bite that her compromised immune system to the point she could no longer fight. That night we stayed at the home of our pastor’s wife’s cousin. I woke up in the night crying. When I mentioned my tears over breakfast, Pastor said “I didn’t know you were that close.” Why didn’t he know after all those years and months that I deeply cared about and loved her; how could he be that clueless?
She was cremated, as she had wanted. Our mutual friend Judy to brought Katie’s ashes to Roseburg. Judy arrived early in the evening and brought them to our house. Katie had told Dave and me that she didn’t want her girls to watch her ashes be put into her grave. Dave and I took them to the cemetery. It was dark and the gate was locked so we climbed over it, shovel, flashlights, and the box of her ashes in hand.
In the dark, he dug the grave. It was a profound experience, what I call “Holy Ground.” When you know God is showing up. We prayed and thanked God for all His work preparing Dave and I ahead of time when she was sick and I was starting with my assignment. It reminded us of the families in pioneer times. When the loved ones had to prepare a body, dig a grave, and say goodbye; with no mortician available. Deaths for them were raw. We were getting an up-close experience, just the two of us, in the dark. Dave dug the ground beside her mother’s headstone to put Katie’s ashes in it. We were committed to making her request come true.
The girls and I designed the memorial booklet to hand out to Katie’s memorial. Together we ordered a bouquet to display right under her picture at the front of the sanctuary. It was held at the church we attended. We celebrated her life afterward with family members and close friends who all went to the cemetery. The girls’ father was there, he’d had been absent most of their lives, and I was grateful that he came to show his respect.
Katie wanted them to go to Australia to live with her step-sister, Sylvia and her husband Brock but she was concerned that they might be too strict. After the girls got their mother’s death certificate, they moved to Australia to live with them. It didn’t turn out that they were too strict but instead, Ruby and Molly flourished. I keep in touch with Katie’s girls on Facebook. They still live in Australia, I’m so glad they are doing so well and both girls have families of their own.
After Katie’s death, I listened to Christian radio on my drive to my part-time job at a wholesale food distributor. I was working at the salon three days a week, I was busy as usual. The songs always made me cry and I finally had to stop listening because I couldn’t go to work in tears every day. My heart felt frozen for a long time, but sunshine eventually broke through. I know God is faithful. God, in His love brought Katie safely home; now dancing on the streets of gold with her mom, with no leukemia, no tears, ready to greet her girls on the other side.
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