Fourteen days in the hospital when you don’t know what is wrong can be very be tedious. My wife was not feeling well. Hadn’t for a while. She never complained when sick, so it took a while before I noticed. Her aliment? She couldn’t retain any food or fluids in her body. She lost sixty-five pounds. I took her to the emergency room and they put her in a room to run tests.

 I stayed with her every night except one during her hospital stay. I slept on a rickety cot that the hospital provided me. My mother and I bought her some pajamas, so she didn’t have to spend her days in a gown that opened in the back. She was grateful for that.

The nurses constantly hooked her up to dripping stuff and monitors everywhere. The Doctors ran test after test measuring everything that went in and everything that came out. They checked her inside and checked her body outside looking for any clue to what was wrong. They took a lot of blood.

I wanted to make her time there fun and not boring. She read books, did crossword puzzles, and worked on a cross stitch of a bear for my brother. Her stitchery stuff was always the best anyone had ever seen. You could frame it from the backside and it still looked great. She then worked on another one that had a beautiful house with a wraparound porch. She told me she wanted a home like that someday.

We had been married for thirty years and it got better every year. She was the best part of my day and I loved telling her so.  But I never could give her a house like that on a ministry wage.

After two weeks, we talked about how we always enjoyed going out to dinner and to a movie together. She apologized and laughed saying she couldn’t do that while in the hospital. Christmas came. Christmas passed. We celebrated Christmas in her hospital room.

On New Year’s, I told her I had to take care of a few things and I would be back. I went to the church where I worked as a youth pastor and borrowed a projector I could hook up to my laptop. Then I swung by home and picked up two of her favorite movies. Princess Bride and Pride and Prejudice. We arranged her furniture, set her up in her bed, and we watched movies on the wall of her hospital room like it was a drive-in movie. We laughed and cried. We held each other’s hands tightly the whole time. Nurses kept peaking in as no one had ever done that before.

A few days later, she was dismissed from the hospital. They never found the cause of her problems but decided to treat it as if she had celiac disease. That, I learned, is a problem with the lining of the intestines. You can’t eat anything with gluten in it like bread or pizza. We went home and bought all new utensils and pots and pans and started the gluten-free diet. She was always hungry and still could not keep anything in her system. After about a week and a half she felt better but was far from well. A month went by.

I brought home a single yellow rose and caramel apple for her Valentine’s gift not knowing that four days later she would die. I was devastated. We never thought it would come to that.

After the funeral and burial at the cemetery I stayed with my mother for a while. Eventually, I went back to our home—alone. I went back to work.

While at work I would sneak behind doors to cry. I’d come home and just sit in the driveway at night not wanting to go inside. I would take meds, so I could go to sleep. I put a picture of her on an end table in the living room and I moved the picture to the bedside table at night when I went to bed.

I cried constantly. I even considered getting a sailboat and sailing into the sunset never to return. I wanted to be where she was.

 I’d stopped going to church where I served as I couldn’t walk into the building without remembering where we ministered together. She sang solos in church all the time. One that everyone loved was an upbeat song that had the phrase, “Ain’t no grave going to hold my body down.” I saved all the church recordings of her singing and I made a CD of fourteen songs. I listened to it over and over and somehow it comforted me.

I stayed away from church. Surely, they understood. Yet I felt I needed to go back and say goodbye to the teens that I worked with.

That Wednesday night I showed up and told the pastor what I was intending to do. This was going to be very difficult for me. I didn’t think I could do it alone. I asked him, “Can you please ask someone to come in and work with me and the teens tonight?” Immediately, he asked a deacon and his wife to do that. Maybe I could get through this.

 I went into the class and I preached my last sermon to the teens to encourage them about my wife’s death and to tell them goodbye. I told them how even though we had prayed for her healing, that God sees our circumstances from a different perspective. I spoke to them alone.

Afterwards, I walked back out into the vestibule and went up to the pastor. I asked him where my help was. He said, “Oh, I thought that you could do it by yourself. You’re pretty good at that.” I left that night and never went back.

I had never wondered about heaven before this happened. Hadn’t needed to. In my crying I would say repeatedly, “She’s gone. She’s gone.” My son corrected me once. “Dad? you need to finish your sentence.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need to finish your sentence. She’s gone… to heaven.”

That only made me grieve more. Does she see what we do down here? Does she see how hurt I am without her? How can I keep going on?

Then one Saturday night she visited me in a dream. It was so real. She looked so beautiful. She said she was okay and she loved me. Then she sang a song. It was a song I had never heard before. I couldn’t get the tune out of my head. After I had the dream, as it was now Sunday morning, I decided to go to church. A different church. I decided to go to a church where I thought I might see someone I knew that could comfort me.

I went in and no one noticed I was there. I sat in a pew three rows from the back. My wife’s dream-song kept playing over and over in my mind. I especially remembered one phrase. “He gives us the Heaven and Grace our hearts always hunger for.”

The service began. The first praise song started, and everyone stood up. I didn’t know it. I belonged to a church that used a hymnbook and declared that they would never show words on the wall. The next song was also unfamiliar. But it sounded nice. A violinist played a counter melody that I enjoyed.

Then came song number three. The tune sounded familiar, yet I know I had never sung it before. Had never heard it before…before last night, that is! I sat down, and I started crying. It was my wife’s Dream-song. The very same one she had sung to me in my dream. When they sang one verse that kept repeating in my mind, they changed her word “Heaven” to “Healing.”

We had prayed so hard for her healing. We all have a hunger for heaven. She did too. And for my wife, going to Heaven became the greatest healing. I understood.

I returned home and framed the unfinished cross stitch of the house she’d always wanted.  

(Here is her Dream-song as sung by Selah.)

Wonderful merciful Savior
Precious redeemer and friend
Who would have thought that a lamb could
Rescue the souls of men, Oh You rescue the souls of men

Counselor, comforter, keeper
Spirit we long to embrace
You offer hope when our hearts have
Hopelessly lost the way, oh we hopelessly lost the way

You are the One that we praise
You are the One we adore
You give the healing and grace our
Hearts always hunger for, oh our hearts always hunger for

Almighty infinite father
Faithfully loving Your own
Herein our weakness You find us
Falling before Your throne, oh we’re falling before Your throne

By Eric Wise and Dawn Rogers 2001

There were many interesting people who came into the Christian bookstore where I worked. I tried to be kind to everyone and found myself pulling stories out of them.

Sometimes someone came in crying. “My husband just committed adultery. I don’t want to get a divorce. Is there a book that can help me?”

Or someone came in searching. I loved helping them find their very first Bible. And there was always visitors from out of town that had interesting stories.

I’ll never forget the day after Valentine’s day when a famous basketball coach came in looking for a card for his wife—a day late!

“I’m sorry,” I said, “The lady employees put those cards up right after the 14^th.” Perhaps they did that because they knew that no man EVER would buy a Valentine’s Day card after Valentine’s day.

He found a generic card, paid for it in cash, and rushed out.  

As usual, some of the most memorable people were the ones that were unusual. One homeless man used to come in and ask to play the piano. He played very loud and I had to ask him to stop playing as I was afraid that he would break the instrument. I remember one day he came in dressed only in a dirty white t-shirt one size too small and white cut off sweat pants. He had flip-flops on his white sock feet. He told me that the place he was staying finally put in a toilet. He was so happy that when he asked to play the piano, I let him. Of course, I told him that he needed to play softly because there were students studying in the coffee shop.

I unlocked the grand piano and he sat down.

Classical music is my go to music. Tchaikovsky is my favorite. Swan Lake is my favorite music off all time. When he began to play Mozart, I stood behind him quite impressed. Then he suddenly stopped.

“No. That’s not right,” he said, shaking his head back and forth, while he scratched his behind. After a loud “Humph,” he began the same symphony again…Symphony No. 40 in g minor… IN A DIFFERENT KEY!

NOTE: I really don’t know the name of the music. I just googled Mozart and chose one of his most recognizable masterpieces.

Did you hear me? He played it again in a different Key. Then he abruptly stopped in the middle and said, “That’s wrong.” He squeezed his eyes shut for what seemed the longest time.

I held my breath.

“It should be like this,” he declared, and played the piece in the same key, however different in several places. As I watched and listened, I realized that as unbelievable as it seemed, he was rewriting Mozart! When he finished, there were several students in the coffee shop who applauded.

After the concert he stood, and I locked the piano once again.  We both walked together to the counter where I stood behind the cash register.

Out of breath he leaned in and said, “Did you know that the aliens from Saturn sent me a message last week?”

“No, do tell.”

He moved his hand over the other in a broad circle. “Y’know the rings are like a record.”

“Un huh.”

“And NASA sent up the spaceship Cassini, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, it glanced along the rings like a needle on a record…and they sent me a message!”

Now you know what I was thinking. The same thing you are thinking. So, I whispered to him, “What. Did. They. Say?”

He leaned in closely and whispered back, “I. Can’t. Tell. You.”

Well, of course, it was a message to him. Not a message to the world. We said goodbyes and before he left, he turned around and said to me, “You are only the twenty-third person I have ever told about this.”

After he left, I changed the store’s overhead music to “Mozart for Learning.” And… I listened for a message from Saturn.

I don’t have to be good.

In my long-legged life I have met some extraordinary people. One that always amazed me was a Japanese woman who would come into the coffee shop to study. She was working on her doctoral dissertation and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Probably the first time I noticed her was when she went to the ladies restroom. As she opened the door, the barista called out, “The light switch is on the outside of the room.”

The woman walked into the dark and closed the door—without turning on the light! I was concerned that she had not heard the warning. Before I could get to the other side of the room to turn on the light, she exited. It was then I noticed her dog. Her seeing-eye dog. She didn’t need the light because she had been blind from birth.

That first day after introductions, I said, “I bet you save a lot of money not needing to turn on the lights at your home.”

“Oh no, quite the contrary. Turning on the lights is the first thing I do when I walk in.”

I gave her a puzzled look even though she couldn’t see it. “Why is that?”

“Well, I don’t need the light. But robbers need the dark.”

She went on to explain that she could tell when a light is on as she enters a room. “It feels different. It hums.”

I closed my eyes and tried to listen for the lights. But I didn’t hear anything but the espresso/cappuccino machine as it frothed milk for a customer.

As she sat at the table, laptop open, dog always at her side, we became friends. I always enjoyed talking with her.

I was not the only one who didn’t notice she was blind. One evening as the store was about to close, as young man approached her and said, “It is dark outside and the alley way this time of night always has unsavory characters. Would it be okay if I walked you to your car?”

Without skipping a beat, she replied, “I didn’t drive tonight. And I already have a ride home. Thank you though.” She usually took the bus to her apartment. The young man kindly told her goodnight, yet left somewhat rejected by the woman he was hitting on.

She laughed. “Didn’t he see my dog?”

One slow evening, while I was bored at the cash register on the book side of the store, she approached me.

“Hello, Oklahoma.” Not her real name, I couldn’t pronounce her real name. That was close enough. She always knew me from my voice. Maybe my smell too.

Holding out her cell phone she asked me to take a picture of her for social media. Someone had sent her a shirt and she wanted to show them she had received it. A conversation ensued about her loving to take photos. Someone would say, “Wow, what a beautiful sunset!” She would take a picture of it and post it online asking people to describe it. Sometimes she aimed incorrectly and missed the sunset. Her friends were always honest with her. She loved posting pictures of the meals she had made. She was a good cook.

“I like trying things sighted people do,” she said.

Probably the most unique thing she showed me was a picture of her doing archery in medieval period costume! I found it funny that she chose the Age of Enlightenment. She belonged to a LARPing group in the area. Live Action Role Playing. The picture showed several arrows on a target.

“Are those your arrows?”

She nodded.

“How do you know where to shoot? Is there a bell or tone sound on the target?”

“Oh no,” she said, “I listen to where the other archers hit the target with their arrows, and I aim for that sound. I don’t have to be good. They do.”

The day we said goodbye was a sad day. From her strength and good humor, as well as her excellent attitude toward her “handicap,” she always encouraged me. Some day I plan on shooting a bow and arrow. I’m going to close my eyes and see how I do. Please dial 911 before I start that.

The first time I saw her in the store I thought this tall thin woman reminded me of someone out of a Jane Austin novel by the way she walked as if each step was precisely where they should be. She carried a purse over her left arm and sometimes a green sweater over her shoulders. When she spoke, it was in a high lilting I’m-more-important-than-you delicate speech. I had no idea that she was homeless.

She would sashay around the art gallery upstairs and sometimes sit in the coffee shop. Oddly, since she began coming in, we noticed items showing up around the store that were not our merchandise. Colorful glass spheres, candle holders, and other expensive looking nick knacks. Several stores nearby reported such things missing from their shops. We later discovered it was she who brought them to the store as if she was decorating her own home.

One evening she came in and looked at the greeting cards. At times she would glance my direction and quickly turn away. She never bought anything, so I watched her closely. Later I did a walk through the store and she was not to be found. I checked to see if any of our nick knacks were missing. They were not. When the store closed, I did a walk through again before I counted the cash register money. When I finished the report for the boss, I set the alarm and headed home.

The next day, the boss told me that the alarm had gone off about fifteen minutes after I left for home. I assured him I had done a walk through. When the police arrived, they didn’t find anything. I wondered if it was that woman. That night at work I did an in-depth check looking in every nook and cranny for the Jane Austin woman. Sure enough, in a back secluded area of the gallery where the heating and air conditioning systems were, was what appeared to be a nest in the corner. Several water bottles, a McDonald’s sack, and a green sweater.

I had dealt with a homeless man once before who wouldn’t leave one night saying this is where he decided to sleep. I warned him that I would call the cops. “Call ‘em,” he said, and lay his head back and closed his eyes. Many times, homeless people will do something that will get them in jail for the night. They call it “Getting two hots and a cot.” Meaning two free meals and a place to sleep. Normally, I am polite to the homeless. People are people. But the store had rules and we set an alarm at night. I called the police. They escorted the man out, however, did not arrest him for trespassing. I wondered if he had been the one who had made the nest and set off the alarm. But I couldn’t picture him in that green sweater.

The next Saturday after the alarm had gone off the woman came into the store again. I watched her peruse the greeting cards. Later she got a glass of water and set in the coffee shop. About thirty minutes before closing I noticed she was gone. Travelling upstairs. I found her… asleep right in the middle of the art gallery’s wooden floor!

I kindly woke her and told her that she could not sleep there, and I asked her about her green sweater. She said, “Not mine.” Then she went down stairs and I assumed she left the building. Fifteen minutes later the barista told me someone was in the ladies’ restroom and had been there longer than necessary.  Of course, I knocked on the door to see if she was alright.

“Just a minute,” she said. A minute turned in to another fifteen. I know that sometimes the homeless would use our restrooms to take a “sink shower.” But she had been in there way too long. I knocked again and she said, “Just a minute. I’m a lady you know.”

She certainly had her pride and I was obviously not prejudiced, but I was concerned about her sense and sensibility of time. She wouldn’t be persuaded.

I called the police.

Several policemen arrived and they pounded on the bathroom door and told her they were the police and she needed to come out.

“Just a minute,” she said with a major emphasis on the word minute.

They pounded again saying they would break the door in if she didn’t come out.

Slowly she opened the door and peaked out. “I’m a lady. I was doing lady stuff,” she said.

They questioned her a bit and she suddenly began talking as if she was British. “Are you from England?” one policeman asked.

“I speak in many accents!” she replied in her British tone.

After much persuasion and argument (in several different accents) she said, “There are a lot of empty buildings at night and why couldn’t you just let us sleep there?” The police wouldn’t relent. In a huff as if the servants wouldn’t listen to her, she said she would, “Never visit this establishment again.”

She tossed her head back, and with her nose in the air, she stepped precisely where each step should be… out of the “establishment.” I never saw her again. I’m not certain, but I think we donated her green sweater to the homeless shelter.