And about Marcia

I keep thinking about Marcia, not just yesterday's Marcia but Marcia through all the years.

Doug and I have always felt that she simply has something in her makeup that no one else we know has.

She is funny, smart, down to earth, brave, unruffled, filled with amazing common sense and a kind of spirit that is just overall difficult to define. If this were the Oregon Trail, she'd be there with the wagon, a baby on her hip, leading the horse, instructing the boys how to find food, dealing with the daughter who just got her period in the wilderness, trying to come up with a plan for dinner, and maintaining a calm collected spirit. She'd be teaching them to love God, obey her and dad, but still have fun somehow. She'd be teaching them to read and what plants are poisonous. All while her husband is sick in the wagon.

Marcia is somehow like no one else I've run across in life as a human being.

When Wayne was dying, she cried, she wasn't stoic or emotionally distant. Don't get this picture in your mind of someone who was just perfect and unruffled and nonplussed. There was sadness expressed, there was difficulty for sure. A lot of tears. But she was also so present in the moment, wiping his brow with a cold facecloth, talking to him and letting him know who was there. She kissed his forehead and cheeks. She told him that she was going to miss him so much. She attended to the children's questions and needs. She encouraged them to come hold daddy's hand and be there, and if they didn't want to - she didn't pressure them. She never once lost it with them.

And then we cracked jokes, had some laughs, got some more tears all mixed in there.

As Wayne was dying, at the very end in those last 15 minutes or so, she didn't ask anyone to leave the room, go away... I know a lot of people would. She told me he would have wanted us all to be there if he could tell us. She knew her husband, knew his wishes, knew exactly the person he was. And she abided by that so beautifully. 

As you and God are my witnesses, I swear... please allow me in this universe to be a small portion as strong as this woman was on that day in anything I can come up against. Let me keep my cool. Let me assess and reflect, not attack and react. Let me release selfishness and embrace some selflessness.