Life Matters - February 19, 2025
I couldn’t open my eyes but I could hear. And what I heard was Erma, a sweet young lady, our loyal, caring daughter, Erma, talking. As I became aware that she was talking to me I heard her say ‘’Mom is right here with me Dad, tell Mom you love her.” The words registered in my brain, memories flooded in, melding the words into cohesive thought and slowly, but surely, the words whispered between my lips, “I love you, Sadie.”
With wonder I heard Erma exclaiming and rejoicing to the others in the room that I had told Mom I love her. I wondered why her voice choked up with sobs. I wondered what the rejoicing was about. At this point, I didn’t know my family had been waiting and praying for this moment. I didn’t know the hard of the unknown. I didn’t know the pain of dashed hope at other moments like this one, when talking brought no response and they didn’t know if it ever would. The one thing I did know is that I had expected to go and be with Jesus. But now, as I faded into a deep sleep, memories were awakening me again to an awareness of this present world, of my family, awakening in me a desire to be at home with my family around me.
When I awoke again, the painful transition from wanting to go to wanting to stay suddenly clinched itself in my heart. But not without the afore-mentioned struggle. Without a doubt it was not going to be the easy route.
There were many good things that happened during my hospital stay. Friends came to visit. Family came to support. As they had been all along. Of special joy to me in those days was five-year-old Katrina, our energetic youngest who had the innate ability to treat her dad as if he were normal and the hospital situation as if it were a new adventure stuck into the bigger adventure called Life. She sat on the side of my bed and chattered to her captive audience of one. I longed to hug her but I couldn’t. I willed my body to move, but it wouldn’t cooperate.
Katrina soon had many friends within the confines of the hospital. Every nurse assigned to my room loved her, with her little girl antics and sincerity, as did nurses she met in the wide hallway and at the nurse’s station. She bubbled with little girl laughter and joy. The nurses gave her money to spend at the first floor gift shop and she came back with a mug for Dad ! The one side had a picture of a little boy wearing a cowboy hat big enough that it covered most of his ears, tipped back a little so he could see out just below the brim, and oversize leather work boots with uppers extending to above his knees. On the opposite side was an inscription,
I love you Dad
Its going to be tough wearing your shoes
I loved it. I love her. I longed that my family knew how much I loved them even as I slept most of the time away and only aroused when interaction was initiated and kept going by one or the other of them.
The children still living at home made sure their precious mom always had someone with her at the hospital and all of them, Erma, Caleb, Steve, Carolyn, Jeremy, Kenny, and Katrina, the littlest one who stayed at times, visited almost every evening. The three married girls, Linda, Laura, and Eva Joy were there a lot as well. Laura and family were home, on mission furlough, from Zanzibar, Africa at the time of the accident that well nigh took my life and Joy and family were able to come home on an early furlough from Benin, Africa upon receiving the news that a fall from a roof may soon bring about the end of my sojourn here.
The children still living at home arrived again the evening after I began my fatigued attempts at communication and I was so happy to see them. Even though in a weakened physical state, I was as yet unaware that, for them, there was a deep unanswered question about my mental acuity.
Son Caleb sat at my bedside and talked about a recent Sunday afternoon (the Sunday before the accident) when he and I rode across harvested fields, he on his roan and I on my palomino, to a creek with the purpose of…well…enjoying the sunny day together on horseback. Excited to talk about it I remembered details to add to the conversation which seemed to excite Caleb even more as we discussed (he talked and I whispered) which horse crossed the creek best, how to get them acclimated to going through water, galloping back home, etc. Suddenly, I thought of something and whispered, “Was that before my accident, or after?”
I knew…by the expression on Caleb’s face. I knew by the knowing, if not dismayed, eye exchanges shared by Caleb and the family listening around the bed. Too late I realized I had messed up. It couldn’t have been after my accident! It had to have been before. But I was too drained, too weak, to correct my mistake. I closed my eyes and went to sleep. It was to be the first of many such self-inflicted misunderstandings.
Us Lapp boys don’t typically think of ourselves as good communicators anyhow. At least not conversationally. One of the first (observable to those in the room) signs of hearing and understanding when emerging from said comatose condition was when my second oldest brother, Leroy, said to me (translated from PA Deutsch) ‘’Isn’t that right, Emanuel, its hard enough to communicate when you’re a Lapp, without being in a coma yet?” I felt my lips express my amusement at the brotherly jibe and overheard joyous expressions from family members who observed my response. I felt understood and content as I was enveloped again by the comatose sleep of the peaceful.
Jesus Lives!