My Last Chance to Say Thanks and Goodbye

The safest redoubt for a freshly grieving husband probably is to reflect on the 100,000 gold-encrusted memories we jammed into 14 years together, 13 of them in marriage.

But first:

After sitting at Diane’s bedside for 10 consecutive hours on Friday, hoping, fruitlessly, that she would rally to a miraculous recovery, or at least utter words, I thought I had drained my tear ducts.

Four members of my family have died, but I never was present.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Diane’s first days back home from the hospital, she was almost spirited, though not remotely her old self. I based my optimism on one in a billion chances. Who cares about odds?

On Wednesday afternoon after she had settle in her hospice bed, I kissed her and she spoke with softness and undeniable clarity. “Do you want to watch the Dodger game?” she asked with a smile of her baseball fan husband.

“Only if you will watch with me,” I said. “They don’t start for 3½ hours.”

Fifteen minutes later, she informed a new set of people at her bedside, “Ari and I are going to watch the Dodger game,” an electronic bonus we had been denied for four days at the hospital.

The backstory is that until May, Diane, my beloved Diane, knew less about baseball than Tom Jefferson, who died before it was invented.

One night in the living room when I was watching a Dodger game, she suddenly, but low-key, made an ephemeral inquiry about a play.

I forgot about it until the next day when I came home. For the first time in our marriage, she had the television set tuned to the Dodger game. Okay.

The next night she did. And every afternoon or evening  after that for the rest of her tragically shortened – so much yet to give — life.

Now I never will know what ignited her abiding interest in Joc Pedersen (because he is Jewish and hits prodigious home runs), Puig, Kershaw, Greinke and of course Andre Ethier because, facially, he resembles her younger daughter Sanda.

Friday was marginally easier to endure because she was the most popular nurse practitioner at the VA in the Valley. So many came to say goodbye. This, combined with her treasure chest of natural assets, attracted and fiercely retained more friends than Trump, Hillary, and even Bob Smith, a hermit in Casper, WY.

They all streamed into our home Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – slightly distracting me from Diane’s impending death.

Medics assured us she could hear us without being able to acknowledge. Leaning over the bed, I spoke a lifetime of “I love you’s.”

In addition, Shulamit and Barbara, our dearest neighbors, could give the world lessons in accommodating a devastated family at a time of death.

Kate Tirona is unanimously voted Caregiver of the Year.

The exquisite, tender, loving, astoundingly sensitive care she took of Diane’s mind and ever-aching, shrinking body since January, days after Diane’s forced retirement from the VA, is a model for all who follow.

Her unrivaled care extended Diane’s life longer than had been expected. Qualitatively.

Referring to Diane as “my Jewish mom,” Ms. Tirona and Diane established a strikingly intimate kinship that will endure.

Partly, this was because of their parallel medical interests.

More dominantly, it was because of each woman’s wide and bottomless sense of compassion for others, especially those in need. Such women are God’s rarest creation. And my dear wife was. May I join you soon, Baby.

The snugly bound relationship between Diane and Kate can be traced to the deepest floor of their souls – both precisely fit the demanding profile of an Eishes Chayil, the quintessential Jewish woman, which also is a precious Shabbat melody that honors Jewish women for their nearness to perfection, the highest compliment that maybe paid to a Jewish woman.

Early Friday afternoon, when we still were hoping the ever graceful Diane would rally one more time and speak to us, I asked my stepson Jamie to sing Eishes Chayil.

Our living room morphed into heaven on this planet for the duration of Jamie’s singing. The world stopped and admired.

Diane worshipped Jamie’s magnificent voice more than any other on earth.

When he sang “Shalom Aleichem,” “Eishes Chayil” or chanted traditional prayers at our Shabbat table, Diane swooned. Jamie was giving her and she was embracing an ultimate gift of motherhood. Since Jamie has lived in Israel for the past decade, such rich occasions have been widely scattered.

For now, the heavenly chorus will sing on Jamie’s stead, and I will hum, sadly, happily, eager to soon join her in the listening audience.

Her eyes were only three-quarters shut, the pattern since we went to the hospital for the final time, Saturday, Aug. 8.