As I’m loading the Cessna 185 in the oppressive heat of the Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela airport, I wonder where I should lay the dead baby—in the cabin or the belly pod? The father speaks little English, but I can read his abject eyes. His home is 230 miles away, up the Orinoco River, and he has to return there to bury his dead little boy. Will we get there today?

I think back to a week ago. We’re landing at Tama Tama, a remote New Tribes Mission base on the Orinoco River. (We call the mission “NTM.”) With me is a Venezuelan doctor who wishes to examine several sick people, mostly Yekuana Indians. While the doctor works, I go to Erma Killam’s house for a huge lunch of fried plantains, yucca, and rice, and then return to the airstrip to hand-pump gasoline out of 55-gallon drums into the plane’s two wing tanks.

The doctor walks out to the airstrip. “I treated several people,” he says, “but we have two sick Yekuana babies that need to go back with us to the Puerto Ayacucho hospital. We don’t have the medicines or equipment to treat them here.”

We decide to leave immediately. The doctor climbs in next to me in the front and holds one of the tiny babies, a girl. The father of the little boy sits in the back holding his infant son.

Soon we are hurtling along at 10,000 feet over the jungle floor, looking down at what appears to be miles and miles of broccoli occasionally cut by twisting, muddy rivers. The discomfited baby girl lies in the doctor’s arms with eyes wide open, too weak to cry. In the back, a flickering flame of life causes the infant boy to turn in his father’s arms, arms filled with threadbare hopes. The engine’s drone makes my drowsy eyes drop. The doctor sees me and yells, “Caramba; está dormido!” (He’s asleep!) After that, he talks constantly, and I try to stay more alert. After we land, I drive the doctor, the two babies, and the father to the hospital.

The next morning I learn we were too late for the little girl—she died during the night. Venezuelan law demands burial 24 hours after death, so we must fly back to Tama Tama today. Russ, the NTM supply man, says, “Well, we can get together 200 kilos of supplies to round out the flight.”

Another missionary tells me, “I need to get back to Tama Tama, so I’ll travel with you, too.” We wrap the dead baby in cloths and place her on the airplane cabin floor. No relative accompanies the body.

We’ve radioed ahead, so a large group of missionaries and Yekuana people meet us at the Tama Tama airstrip. The father delivers the baby into the weeping mother’s arms and soon she and a host of relatives and friends file slowly away to the cemetery. This cemetery already holds several NTM missionaries including Bob, who died of hepatitis, and Joey his son, who was eaten by piranhas after he dove into the Orinoco River.

I no sooner land back at Puerto Ayacucho, than I learn that the second baby died shortly after the first one did. The anxious father begs me, “Capitan, will you please fly my son back?”

I tell him, “It’s too late to fly today; we’ll have to go tomorrow.”

But the next day dawns cloudy and squally. Tama Tama reports rain, low clouds, and lightning. We wait several hours, but the weather does not improve. I have to tell the father, “We can’t fly today; we must wait one more day.”

The next morning I’m up early, driving our green Chevrolet truck down to pick up the father and his dead son. Puerto Ayacucho does not have a morgue, so the baby has been lying solitary somewhere in this stifling heat and humidity. We have to act discreetly because we’re violating Venezuelan law—it’s been almost two days since the baby died.

We drive out to the airport. When we place the baby in the airplane cabin I detect a faint odor. I tell the father, “I’m sorry—we must place the baby down in the plane’s belly pod.”

The father hesitates. “No podemos llevarlo en cabina?” (We can’t carry him in the cabin?)

I tell him, “I’m afraid we cannot.” We open the pod’s small cargo door and gently lay the body inside. It weighs almost nothing.

The weather is good and the flight back to Tama Tama uneventful. Once again I’ve radioed ahead, and a small crowd has gathered beside the airstrip. As we roll to a stop, the father exits the plane and prostrates himself face down on the ground before his distraught wife and all the relatives. Tears and regret. He’s wailing, “I did all I could. I did all I could. We could not save him!” The family gathers around. Some old women stick lighted candles into the mud nearby.

There stands the mother, still rounded from her recent pregnancy. Perhaps she’s thinking of the birthing pangs, the agony of labor, the joyous sound of the baby’s birth cries—but now, nevermore. We hand her the still, small bundle which she places inside a tiny, unpainted wooden box her family has prepared. She lays the baby on some cloths, with his little head resting on a hand-sewn pillow. Men pound the wooden lid shut. Then the whole group journeys to the cemetery where friends have already dug the grave.

I am solo on the return flight back to Puerto Ayacucho, alone to ponder these deaths and ponder our purpose here in Territorio Amazonas. Could we have flown the babies out sooner? Why is the Puerto Ayacucho hospital so limited? How do I begin to understand the sorrow of the relatives? Babies die regularly in Amazonas—infected umbilical cord, dehydration, colds, malaria. I remember adult deaths also—Ed Killam, who I flew for burial in Tama Tama after he died of leukemia in the capital city. Then there was that Yanomamo man who died in Puerto Ayacucho, 400 miles from his home. The NTM missionary had to himself build the funeral fire and when the fire cooled, gather the bones for transfer home.

The airplane has saved other lives, and I trust that it has helped demonstrate God’s love for the Amazonas people, but today the plane was transformed into a flying hearse. I pray God’s consolation for the grieving family, and for all those in pain across this vast Amazonas jungle.

Christianity has to be disappointing, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations; it is a mechanism for subjecting all things to the will of God.
—Simon Tugwell

It’s spring, 2011, and I’ve just agreed to join a team to help construct a medical clinic in Colombia. What am I thinking? I’ve got everything I need for this trip—except passion, skill and strength! I’m feeling exhausted—I even made a cardiology appointment. And yet in a way I can’t explain, I feel called. I guess callings are cruciform, but strange, and they sometimes go against common sense.

Now our Avianca 737 is touching down in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, the former jewel of the Spanish Main. Five hundred years ago, Pedro de Heredia founded this city and built its surrounding wall, now worn and pitted by sea salt breezes. When we face questions going through customs, I try to explain in Spanish, “That nail gun doesn’t have any bullets.”

Nostalgia envelops me as I think back forty years ago to when our family lived here in Colombia. We got robbed. I crashed the mission airplane. I writhed on my bed delirious from typhoid fever. Above all, I remember the enervating heat and humidity, and feeling like a failure. My happiest day? Boarding a Boeing 747 in Bogotá and flying our family back to Miami. So reprise Colombia? Why this calling to return?

Soon we’re inside the walled city, and our yellow van maneuvers to avoid the careening cars that race through narrow, crazy quilt streets. White-faced mimes and break-dancers plug the intersections as they run up to the van window for tips. Tentacular bougainvillea climb the cast-iron window bars of the stuccoed houses. We drive by the high-arched colonnade of the Government Center, and look opposite to the yellow wall of the cathedral where for centuries priests have baptized, married, and buried the faithful. Now we park and exit the van, elbowing our way past street vendors selling bracelets, stone carvings, leather belts, paintings, and food. I inhale the smell of fresh arepas (corn patties), salchicha (spicy sausage)—and acrid diesel exhaust. We pass a graceless beggar who sits on the sidewalk with a misshapen face and shrunk shanks, reaching his hand out. But in spite of the chaos, I harbor no second thoughts. I guess when you receive a calling, you don’t need anything else. I somehow know I’m supposed to be here.

We drive down to the dock and smell the sea. Waving palm fronds frame the distant sailboats. Pelicans swoop down, fishing the waves, while split-tailed frigate birds with angular five-foot wings soar overhead. Pure tropicality. We walk out on the dock to pile our luggage into the small fiberglass launch that will carry us to Boca Chica. As we lurch out from the dock, I don my lifejacket and grip the gunwale until my hand hurts. The bow of the hurtling boat hangs high above the water, but when it slams down onto the wind-wrinkled waves it crunches every vertebra.

Arriving in Boca Chica

After a half hour, the hills of Tierra Bomba Island rise from the water ahead of us. On the ocean side of the island live the super-rich, some of them fattened by drug money, snug behind their chain-linked, guard-dogged, servant-tended houses. But we approach from the bay side, where to our left we can make out the tiny San Luis fortress, part of Cartagena’s history. When Lord Vernon attacked Cartagena in 1741, San Luis brandished forty-nine cannons and three mortars.

After battling for weeks, Vernon departed in disgrace with fifty ships lost and 90 percent of his navy dead from combat or yellow fever. One of Vernon’s sailors was Lawrence Washington, half-brother of George. When he returned home to Virginia he named his small plantation “Mount Vernon” after his British admiral.

When we dock at the forlorn town of Boca Chica, we’re met by taxi motorcycles and donkeys with wooden carrying frames on their backs. A local tells us, “The children beat the donkeys, and sometimes they light firecrackers and stick them up their anuses.” These humble beasts bear their burdens through the town’s potholed, dirt streets, streets that turn into rivers when it rains.

The little town seems poor, the kind of place that destiny has a serious grudge against. We walk uphill into the town past half-finished cement-block houses. A few years ago the government laid an underwater power cable from Cartagena, and now satellite dishes sit on the laminated asbestos roofs. It’s dusk, and a solitary lightbulb glows in most living rooms, several of which double as bars. These offer Aguila and Pilsner beer while their huge speakers boom out salsa and cumbia music. A couple slow-dances in one of the small open rooms, her arms up around his neck.

Most people here are slave-descended Afro-Colombians. A tall, short-skirted woman walks by, her kinky hair kerchiefed atop her head. Another woman carries an infant on her hip and trails a toddler behind. Other kids run around wearing dirty underpants, or less. Down at the water, five brawly fishermen in shorts and T-shirts push off in a small motorboat that carries a hundred-meter-long net with bobbers and sinkers, evincing a threadbare hope of success that burns like hot coals under the ashes of their poverty.

I wonder, what is the Good News for these people? What difference can our small team make? What if I can’t tolerate this heat? What if I get sick or lose my hat or my sunscreen? Or money, passport, or car keys? How can I muster enough love? How could I be called to come here?

Living at YWAM

Several young men wheelbarrow our baggage through the streets, and then stop at Youth With a Mission (YWAM), a closed compound where broken glass sticks out the top of high cement-block walls. The steel gate creaks open, and we enter an oasis of green plants and flowering shrubs.

Marlea, YWAM’s accountant, greets us, and says, “I grew up here, but I’m from Montería.”

“Montería!” I say. “Our family lived there for three years!”

We become friends. Her fiancé, Samy, an orphaned island boy “adopted” by YWAM, works maintenance here. Another Colombian, Alexandra, is the cook, and Blanca Rosa serves as the resident pastor. YWAM is international and multicultural—their slogan: “Encounter God, Find Purpose, Serve the World.” Four twenty-something Germans all speak excellent English, and two of them, excellent Spanish. Kati and Leni are nurses and hold regular clinic hours. Anita works in the kitchen. Christian tells us, “The German government’s paying for our service year here.” Three North Americans complete the YWAM team. They all show great hospitality, leading us to a large dorm-type sleeping room. We’re soon in bed, lying exhausted in the humidity, listening to the cumbia music from the neighboring loudspeakers.

The next morning, the Germans prepare us fresh-brewed coffee and milk that we sip from little plastic bags. A big breakfast—plantains, hot arepas, chicken, white cheese, and tasty arroz chino (Chinese rice). They set and clear the tables and wash our dishes—every day. One day ten Korean YWAMers show up. They work in Cartagena with university students. We listen to them yodel as they sing Korean and English praise songs.

A few days later, one of my worst fears comes true—I’ve lost my car keys. (Why did I bring them, anyway?) I search all my pockets and look around my bunk bed, and cannot find them. But that evening Mari appears at the YWAM porch holding something. “Could you check and see if these keys belong to anyone in your group?”

I tell her, “Son míos. ¡Mil gracias!” I can’t believe she found them.

Years ago, when a Mercy Ship docked in a small Mexican coastal town, they hired on Jorge Silva as a mechanic. He became a believer and soon met his North American wife, Karen, on the ship. They have no children, but they midwifed the YWAM work here in Boca Chica in 1997. He explains, “I used to be a communist. At first, that made it hard for my wife’s parents and her church to accept me.”

Fortyish, about five-foot-two, Jorge has dark skin, jet-black hair, mustache, broad neck, and a smile that flashes white teeth. Think Pancho Villa without the ammunition belt. He walks through the village like a male Mother Teresa—caressing children’s hair, chatting up the townspeople, and greeting everybody. I think, I love this guy!

He tells me, “When a visitor calls and asks how many people we have room for, we say, ‘That depends.’”

“Depends on what?” They ask.

“Well, we can take ten Latinos or two Anglos!” Apparently Anglos such as us need more living space.

Jorge is a self-taught mason, carpenter, and electrician and, unlike the stereotypic Mexican male, isn’t afraid to dirty his hands. He’s patient, and sensitive to God’s fecund possibilities. In the face of fierce headwinds, he began building a YWAM medical clinic her ten years ago. Our mission this week—to help him finish it.

Each night we sleep in bunk beds. I smell the the dust, the damp, and the smell of perspiration. I look out the small window and see the slight moon with upturned horns. A tiny fan by my head drones in the dark, while outside donkeys bray, roosters crow, dogs bark, and the loud bar music jangles.

The next day we watch a barge bring in fresh water from Cartagena. Since the island has no water wells, a gasoline-driven engine pumps YWAM’s cisterns full for about $100.00. Other islanders transport their water in plastic jugs tied over the donkey’s backs.

Karen tells us, “We can’t wash clothes in the bay water because most of the town’s sewage empties into it. Look over by the dock there—those rusty tin shacks hanging out over the water are outhouses and their effluvium goes straight into the bay. YWAM teams have built over a hundred cement latrines on the island to try to improve sanitation. Samy collects seawater from the port in five-gallon jugs and dumps it into large plastic drums—we use it to bucket-flush our toilets.”

The girls of Isla Rosarios

On the weekend our team travels by motor launch to beautiful Rosarios Island, passing on the way an old mansion. Jorge says, “That’s where Pablo Escobar, the drug lord, used to live.” Arriving at Rosarios, we defend ourselves against the ubiquitous vendors who press their wares on us—carved stone artifacts, coconut candy, arepas, and deep-fried lobster and shrimp. A feast for the senses. The white beaches here draw many Cartageneros, who snorkel, visit the aquarium, eat seafood meals on the beach, or watch the thonged girls walk by.

We eschew the brazen massage girls who approach us. They walk barefooted on the sand, and their black bodies glisten. They wear cutoff jeans, halter-tops, and hair bows. When they start massaging my shoulders, I try explaining in Spanish that my wife didn’t sign off on massage girls. I feel their strong fingers on my muscles, smell their perfume. They tell me, “Hey, we have to make money too. Let us give you a massage.” I wonder what all is included…. After fifteen futile minutes, they give up and leave.

On the boat trip back, our team leader, Marcus, tells me, “Blanca Rosa wants someone to give the sermon Thursday night.”

I hesitate. “Let’s wait for someone else to offer. I’m not a preacher.” But in the end I say yes. That Thursday, the lambent light of dusk illuminates the barefoot children who arrive first for the service, followed by the women carrying their babies. Lastly, a few men come and the place begins to fill up. All sit on benches under an asbestos roof in YWAM’s tile-floored reception area.

Kati leads the singing. Samy plays guitar as we sing familiar worship songs. I feel joy and gratitude.

I walk to the front and begin my talk about God coming to earth—”El viaje más grande de la historia (“The greatest journey in history”). I read from John 1: “La Palabra se hizo hombre” (“The Word became flesh”), and “La luz brilló en las tinieblas” (“The Light shone in the darkness”).

Just then I hear distant thunder. The squally sky darkens and soon the roaring rain starts bouncing off the laminated roof. A flash lights up the compound, followed by a huge thunderclap, and all the lights go out. I think, What have I said? Is this a sign? A few of the town’s bars have electric generators, but YWAM does not, so I finish the talk by flashlight. We have no electric fans that night and no electricity for the next two days. The people don’t seem to mind—they’re used to the electricity failing.

YWAM’s medical clinic—a flat-roofed, U-shaped cement block building with a metal front gate—sits about 200 yards from the YWAM compound. Jorge tells us, “Supply boats brought out construction materials to the dock, then volunteers shouldered things and brought them up here. I poured each cement block using a wooden form. There’s no other permanent clinic here.”

Fierce dogs nip at our ankles as we walk over to the clinic. Rebar stubs stick out of the steep entry steps, waiting to impale anyone who slips. The sightless eyes of the unfinished window holes stare at us. Our goal: plumb the bathrooms, stucco the walls, hang drywall ceiling, and install doors and windows. I think, Americans work their way to heaven by completing their to-do lists!

Jorge works alongside us and directs the building. It seems that the installed bathroom plumbing don’t meet code, so Travis works all week jackhammering concrete. Plus, the block-layers had cut openings in the wall before measuring the new doors and windows. So Travis expands the concrete holes. I can still taste the cement dust.

Dale deftly hangs drywall while David, sweat running down his tattooed legs, helps Curtis hang drywall in another room. Marcus and I hurl dollops of white stucco against the inner block walls. I wear earplugs (against the jackhammer noise), and a face mask. Sweat soaks my head kerchief and drips down onto my shirt and pants. None of us complain.

Curtis nails ceiling supports into the concrete while he stands on a scaffold that any liability lawyer would drool over. When it threatens to collapse, we prop it against the wall. Vigorous, confident, he says to me, “This half-inch drywall needs more support. Could you cut me nine-inch hanger pieces from that right-angle aluminum stock?” I cut.

But just as often, I stand, or sit, drained of energy, just watching. I was determined to get out into the village in the evenings, but my flagging strength keeps me sitting in the YWAM patio, scratching my itchy “no-see-um” bites.

In the end, we’ve plumbed the bathrooms, stuccoed the walls, hung drywall, and installed the vinyl windows and doors. Jorge’s eyes dance: “Next week the clinic will receive its first patients—right here!”

I feel like a turtle on a fencepost (I didn’t get here by myself; I was called). In spite of my fatigue, I feel great. I muse over the topography of my inscape. I’ve had enough strength for each day and I’ve made new friendships. I preached. I even did a little construction. Because of my “curious calling,” never during the whole time did I question my decision to come.

*                    *                      *

Later, while I’m sitting in the Miami airport Starbucks inhaling my first latte in two weeks, Marcus shocks me when he says, “This trip really stretched me, and we could never have done it without you.” I wonder if he means the translating help I gave, not my construction abilities. I feel so grateful for this strange calling, and I realize again that, against all odds, grace happens.

Barbara is in three weeks of rehab for double knee replacement, so I’m living alone, and learning how to batch it. Take for instance toilet hygiene. I flush, reasoning that if you flush, you never have to clean the bowl, a practice that works pretty well for the first week or so. Besides, if anyone comes over and asks to use the bathroom I can just say, “Go use your own.”

I visit Barbara daily, but when I come home, I face something new—an empty, echoing house. For the first time in 45 years I wonder, How do I do this? How does anybody do single well?

I’m sure the great saints would welcome such vast caverns of space and time for prayer, meditation, or Scripture study. I try a little of that, but it’s not like I don’t have stuff to do—checking email and Facebook, watching TV, reading, Sudoku, playing computer chess…. Did I mention checking email and Facebook?

Household hygiene

Some, but not much, of my free time fills with domestic tasks—housecleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking.

I never understood the big deal about housecleaning. You kind of let the appliances do the work, don’t you? I dust only what I see (I haven’t seen any yet), but to be safe, I plan to vacuum before Barbara comes home. It won’t make any difference, but she’ll be so happy. The sinks in the bathroom are getting kind of gnarly, so I put some liquid soap on a paper towel and rub the basin with it to get off the brown stains. It is a mystery to me how the large sink mirror becomes spotted and smudged. I stand away from it, and even brush my teeth away from the mirror, but it still spots. So I will unspot it before Barbara returns.

And then there’s laundry. I discover the miracle of multiplication and division—if you wear clothes twice as long, you only have to wash them half as often. For two weeks, I have avoided laundry altogether. But eventually, I call Barbara for washer-dryer instructions. She tells me, “Set the washer on normal load, medium temperature, ten-minute wash, cold rinse. Use Bounce tissues.”

But in the middle of the wash cycle, I begin to question putting Bounce in the washer, so I pull out the soggy tissues. She says, “Actually, they go in the dryer. And be sure to air-dry your shirts so they won’t wrinkle.”

Two prickly rubber balls go in the dryer to reduce static cling. I forget to take out the shirts out early. But hey, if you wear a shirt long enough, the wrinkles sort of come out by themselves. Or not. Anyway, you can always wear a sweater or a coat. Your friends will understand.

Getting enough to eat

Laundry can be postponed, but food is very daily. So I go grocery shopping. When Barbara shops, she labors under many constraints. She reads all the labels, buys organic, grass-fed, free range, low fat and, if possible, rain forest certified. No high-fructose corn syrup, limited sugar content, no additives. And then there are the coupons and discounts—I realize our menu, like our wardrobe, is driven by what’s on sale. She’ll drive ten miles to use a fifty-cent coupon.

This is the same woman who scavenged used carrots. When I was in graduate school we had almost no income, and the kids were young teenagers. Barbara would wait until dark to take the whole family out to the sod farm where the green grocers had thrown out their imperfect carrots. I would keep the engine running, shine the car lights out over the field, and Barbara would run out and stuff carrots into her cloth bag. The three kids would bend over so their friends wouldn’t see them.

We usually made tortillas ourselves with masa and water, then stomped on a cutting board to smoosh them flat. But one day, Barbara surprised us with store-bought taco shells. What a treat!

“Where did you get those?”

“Oh, at a garage sale. But look; they’re all wrapped up and everything.” I praised her ingenuity.

Now that we’re living in Minnesota, Barbara buys certain foods at Aldi’s, the place you rent a cart for a quarter and get it refunded when you’re done. She goes to Mike’s, the green grocer, who sells what I call “used vegetables”— past their expiration dates, but cheap. (She once got “used” blueberries for two dollars a crate.) Also, she shops at Fresh and Natural, where she buys organic and grass-fed meats.

I ignore all the coupons, multiple stores, labels-reading, organic, and limit myself to Cub and Aldi’s. I wander the grocery aisles searching for any randon woman pushing her shopping cart, and ask her, “Do you know where the gluten-free bread is?” I buy some bread, some canned tropical fruit, a couple of avocadoes, celery, two baking potatoes, a pack of frozen peas, and of course, Dove milk chocolate bars with almonds. I briefly consider the healthier, dark chocolate, but why buy candy that doesn’t taste good? Besides, I can just eat twice as much milk chocolate to make up for it. For protein, I buy a six-pack of frozen Angus burgers (pricy, but delicious, and easy to prepare) and a pound of shrimp (it says “cooked, deveined”). I pass on the leafy green vegetables (spinach, broccoli, lettuce), reasoning that Barbara buys so much of this stuff that I probably need to detoxify. I tell Barbara, “I totally get the food-group thing; it’s just that I honor different groups.”

I’ve carefully avoided cooking all my life. In college, I lived in the dorms and ate institutional food. When I was flying with Mission Aviation Fellowship in Chiapas, Mexico, I lived in boarding houses. I would sit in the warm kitchen and watch the cooks scrape the uneaten refried beans back into the pot. In Honduras, a maid cooked and cleaned for me. She was good—once she discovered trichinosis worms in some pork. In Costa Rica, I contracted for room and board in a Costa Rican home.

When I moved to Venezuela, I faced a small crisis—no cook. So I would go to the deli and buy a loaf of bread, a ham loaf, and a big block of cheese, and have them slice them all up. I would buy tomatoes and onions twice a week, and combine all this into sandwiches. Every day. Sometimes I cooked rice, and if it burned, I enjoyed the quemado—that wonderful, crunchy crust sticking to the bottom of the pan. Life was simple. Then Barbara moved in with me and life got more complicated—but I never cooked again.

Now here I am 45 years later, isolated in my necessary solitude, where I’m forced either to starve, or to rely on my own ingenuity. I develop a helpful, daily routine:

1. Open the fridge.
2. See what’s about to rot.
3. Eat it.
4. Repeat next day.

Even though Barbara has left a full refrigerator and freezer, I’m forced to do a little cooking. I call friends with questions: “How long can I keep stuff in the refrigerator before it rots?” “How can I tell when hamburger’s going bad?” “Is it better to refrigerate stuff raw, or cook it first?” “Can I freeze raw carrots?”

When I try making Shrimp Alfredo, I only have to call Barbara twice. She says, “Stir-fry the onions, mushrooms, and shrimp, then pour in the Alfredo sauce. Cook the rice separately.” (I remember the breakthrough day, long ago, when I learned the stovetop burners had more settings than “high” and “off.”) This great dish lasted for three evenings, but I forgot to take the shrimp tails off, so I have to spit them out as I eat.

I discover if you eat two foods per meal instead of four, you only have half the dirty dishes. Even better, if you scoop the stuff out of the pan and put it on a napkin, you don’t have to wash any dishes at all. I feel freedom loading the dishwasher without anyone suggesting a better way to stack the dishes.

Zealous women

Some of the larger plates and casserole dishes in the fridge are not ours. Zealous women, both single and married, have formed a line at my door with cooked food—vegetable soup, beef stew, chicken casserole—resupplying my stores faster than I can eat them. They assume I am totally incapacitated without Barbara and ask, “Are you sure you’re getting enough to eat, Jim? What can I do for you?” They clearly are more concerned about me than about Barbara and her knees. So, what with all these meals, I only go out to eat once (Taco Bell, with a Dairy Queen chaser) and I cook only once (the shrimp).

These dear women bring Barbara flowers, and lots of candy. I confiscate the latter, reasoning that eating chocolate might impede her recovery. I take it home and eat it all before she returns. It’s the least I can do for her.

All these women are part of our social network, which Barbara has activated and maintained with her hosting, visiting, telephoning, and sending cards. When we would go to friends for dinner, Barbara always took something along. Now, when I get invited, I stop at Cub to buy a bouquet of flowers. Or I may take something frozen from the freezer.

*                *                      *

I have friends, male and female, who do single well, including hosting amazing dinners for multiple guests. They have all my respect. But after my three weeks of batching it, I don’t know how they do it.

I accommodate the house for Barbara’s return, obtaining a walker, shower seat, and cane. I myself install grab bars on the ceramic-tile walls in the shower to give her added safety. I am now ready for her return! (I wonder if I should clean the toilet bowls? Nah…. )

I can’t wait to say, “Welcome home, Barbara!”

We’ve been married forty-five years and Barbara needs two knee replacements, but she doesn’t want to do it. A friend told her, “I had one knee done. Then I had the second knee done. It hurt so bad that, if I’d had a third leg, I’d have just said, ‘cut it off!’”

One doctor told Barbara, “We won’t replace your knee until it hurts.” But both knees are hurting more now, joint deterioration makes her walk bowlegged, and she can’t fully straighten her right leg. The time has come.

Friday, Sept. 11. Today, we meet with Dr. Heller, a fortyish, peripatetic, ADHD kind of guy who doesn’t bother changing out of his scrubs when he shuttles between surgery and office consultations. All marsupial, with instruments hanging from his sagging pockets, he seems confident when he reassures us, “I think you should do the knees now.”

Reluctantly Barbara agrees, but she asks, “Should I do one at a time, or both together?”

Dr. Heller, being a 21^st century doctor who believes in patient free will, says, “It’s your call. I can do both at the same time—it’ll take about three hours. Or, we can do them one at a time.”

She seems uncertain, hesitates, but then shocks me when she says, “Let’s do them both at the same time!” Of course, I agree. Why go through the whole thing twice?

Barbara asks, “When you do both at once, do you make sure they’re the same length?”

I interrupt. “Actually, could you make one leg shorter? It’ll keep her closer to home.” (Dr. Heller laughs; Barbara rolls her eyes so hard they must hurt.)

Barbara has a certain fascination for dark scenarios, and asks, “What can go wrong with this operation?”

“Oh, it’s routine,” Dr. Heller says. “The only things we have to watch out for are infections, low hemoglobin, stressed kidneys, unregulated blood pressure, pneumonia, unstaunched bleeding, or blood clots that can go to your brain and give you a stroke and kill you.”

Somehow, Barbara doesn’t seem reassured. And I have images of blood transfusions, staph infection, or paralysis, but I tell her, “Dr. Heller does these operations each day and besides, all those side-affects are rare!” We pencil in “January 19” for the operation.

The operation

Friday, Sept. 18. It’s been a week since seeing Dr. Heller, and Barbara’s knee pain is increasing. She calls his assistant, Megan, to see if she can possibly get in earlier. Megan says, “I’ll put you on a waiting list in case someone cancels.”

Barbara says, “I’m already on the waiting list.”

“Okay. I’ll put you at the top of the list!”

Then, through a small miracle, Megan finds an earlier opening—October 20, so we immediately book it.

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 10:30 a.m. Today is the day. I drive Barbara to United Hospital and soon find myself standing by her gurney. When I take her hand I pray, “O Lord, we commit Barbara into your care. Give her peace. Guide the doctor’s skillful hands.” They wheel her away with a smile on her face. I will not see her again for hours.

My loyal friend Bill has come to vigil with me as we sit helplessly in the waiting room watching the clock nibble away the hours—11:30. 12:30. 1:30. 2:30. I start wondering what’s going on. Then the computer screen in the waiting room says, “B. Hurd, recovery room.” I’m relieved—the operation is over.

3:00 p.m. Dr. Heller pops in and tells us, “We did the right leg first, then the left. For each leg, I made a six-inch curved incision inside the knee, pushed aside the knee cap, along with the muscles and tendons, and installed a metallic piece on the bottom end of the femur. Then we cut off the end of the tibia, drilled a hole down into it, pushed in the artificial knee, and sewed everything up. It went great!” He reminds me of my mechanic explaining my car repairs.

(A month after the operation, Barbara will tell me, “I want to see a video of the operation.”

I say, “No, you don’t!” She never did.)

Dr. Heller says, “She’s in recovery for an hour or so. Then we’ll transfer her to her room and you can go up and see her.”

5 p.m. They have wheeled Barbara up to her sixth-floor hospital room. I walk in, and see her in a field of white—supine, inert, surrounded by machines. Both knees are wrapped and bandaged. Saline solution drips down an IV tube stuck into the back of her hand. An oxygen clip glows on her finger. They’re following her pulse and blood pressure. She’s wearing a wan smile. I carefully embrace her, and tell her I’m so glad to see her.

While we’re talking, I look around her crowded room. On her small table sits her cell phone, Kleenex, medications, water, and a floral bouquet. A wheelchair is folded against the back wall under the window beside her walker and knee-exercising machine. The commode-chair sits by the bed. All that long night I sleep beside her on the couch

Wednesday, Oct. 21. When I wake, Barbara says, “My knees are working, but I can’t raise the toes on my left foot.” It’s true. She tries in vain to bend her toes up, but cannot even move them. They’re already talking about a foot brace.

They had given her OxyContin for her pain, but she threw up this morning. So today they stop the OxyContin and start Dilaudid, another narcotic painkiller.

But the Dilaudid makes her irrational. She can’t answer questions such as, “Who’s the President of the United States?”

“She’s a Republican,” I tell the nurse. “Try another question.” The unsmiling nurse sees no humor in this.

Thursday, Oct. 22. They reduce the Dilaudid, and her mind clears. But she still cannot lift her left toes. The doctor is eager to get her walking and exercising, so he orders a simple brace that fits inside her shoe that will help her lift her foot.

She’s discomfited, just lying in bed. I rub her back, get stuff for her—lozenges, pillows, Kleenex, and her huge tackle-box makeup kit. I adjust the bed angle, adjust her knee exerciser, call the nurse, comb her hair, order her meal, dial numbers for her, arrange flowers and cards sent by well-wishers, sort her mail, restock her water, fetch things. I feel very busy.

I gaze through the window and see St. Paul’s topping the hill, its dome rising above the maples that glow in autumn’s lambent light, dragging their leaves like nets through the windy air. I have lots of time to ponder my own mental inscape. I feel thankful for Barbara’s good care.

Friday, Oct. 23. Good news—Barbara can now lift her left toes!—her foot seems to work perfectly now. We are thankful for this answer to our prayers. One leg is lying on the knee exerciser—straighten, flex, straighten, flex. She’s blowing into the spirometer to improve her breathing and prevent pneumonia, and is transitioning from the wheelchair to walker. Today, her bulky bandage wraps come off her knees. I stare at the tumid, purple incisions with their small butterfly bandages. The alien-angled knees are now in perfect alignment.

Dr. Heller proclaims that Barbara is ready for the rehab center—we can transfer her tomorrow. Her begin organizing her medicines and collecting all her stuff.

Rehab exercise

Saturday, Oct. 24. I push Barbara’s wheelchair to the elevator and then outside to the waiting ambulance. The driver locks the wheelchair to the floor, and whisks off. I follow them in our car.

The Interlude staff welcomes us. Interlude is a rehabilitation center near Unity Hospital in Fridley, run by Allina Health and the Catholic Benedictine order. An in-house chef prepares your meals to order (although Barbara doesn’t have much appetite). I get free coffee. The nurses and aides are attentive, compassionate women—mostly African, or African-American. They install her in a semi-private room. That would be a room where the patient in the adjacent room finishes your sentences. We hear the garrulous woman next door bellowing at the nurse, “I’ve worked very hard on my health… I want to know everything you’re doing” (insistent, demanding.) I think, How can the aides be so patient with her!

Saturday, Nov. 7. Barbara’s now had two weeks of rehab. I sense she wants me to stop in frequently—I visit three times today. As I walk from the entry door toward the elevator, I notice Lisa, the no-nonsense reception lady. Pleasant, but professional, she takes her job seriously. She points to a sign on her desk—“Please sign in and out.” I sign. But, when Lisa’s not sitting there, I don’t sign. Later, I confess to her my careless disregard—but I still don’t change my behavior. I remember the 60s mantra—“Question authority.”

I elevator up to the second floor. Barbara is now using her cane to walk herself down to PT, which she calls “physical torture.” It’s good seeing her progress—knees bending 109^o on right and 118^o on the left. Some redness and swelling on her right knee. The 20-something occupational therapist bounces in, and asks me if I have any questions. I tell her, “If she gives you any trouble, just call me. Make sure she can cook and do laundry before she leaves, because there’s no competent person at home.” Barbara just smiles. (My bacheloring during this time will have to wait for another story.)

Many friends visit. Barbara accommodates them, hoisting her pant legs so they can carefully inspect the healing scars. They bear gifts—orchids, roses, snapdragons. And chocolate. I reason that chocolate may hinder Barbara’s recovery, so I confiscate it all, planning to consume it before she’s discharged.

Tuesday, Nov. 10. Barbara is sending signals she’s getting better—she says she’s bored, she’s resurrecting her “To Do” lists (one for herself and of course, one for me), she’s phoning people to re-energize her social network, and (the greatest sign) she’s reviving her interest in our tortured church politics. The swelling in her knee and calf is subsiding. At her care conference today, all agree that she will go home on Thursday. The staff doctor reviewed her prescriptions (side effects, doses), and then said, “But I know you’ll do what you want to, anyway.” She must know Barbara well.

Homecoming

Thursday, Nov. 12. Today’s homecoming day! It’s been 23 days since Barbara’s surgery. I dollop a gob of icy-hot on her lower back and rub it in, help her brush her teeth, and walk her to the bathroom. She uses her walker to walk to the elevator, and then out to our waiting car. I have put a foam pillow in the passenger seat with a plastic bag on top to help slide her in and out. We put all her stuff in the car—clothes, flowers, gifts, walker, cane, a flexible plastic rod to help her with her leg lift exercises, and a grabber to get stuff she may not be able to reach.

We stop by Walmart to buy Tramadol (an opioid painkiller) and Midnight Melatonin, a natural sleep aid. Driving into our garage for the first time in three weeks, she opens our house door and says, “It’s so great coming home!”

“What’s for dinner?” I ask her. She ignores me.

Actually, I don’t mind making meals, but I keep them simple, and don’t dirty too many dishes.

That evening, Barbara banishes me from the master bedroom. She says, “I toss at night and get up a lot. You’ll sleep better if you’re in the guest room.” Okay…

Saturday, Nov. 14 Piercing pain in her right knee wakes Barbara up tonight. She’s depressed and sometimes crying. Her new knees provide the greatest challenge, but she’s also feeling back pain, and stomach upset from the strong meds. She walks well with the walker. She likes the grab bars I installed in the shower.

I schedule our new routine—three outpatient therapy visits per week, picking up meds at the pharmacy, calling the nurse, and resuming our visits to the Y, where she uses her walker to circle the exercise track.

Wednesday, Nov. 18. We’re going out together now, and Barbara enters the grocery store walker-less—the shopping cart provides enough support. Lois the massage therapist stops in today to give Barbara a one-and-a-half-hour massage. I think, Spiritual and physical healing.

Saturday, Nov. 28. We celebrate our family Thanksgiving a bit late. Barbara spends several hours to-ing and fro-ing in the kitchen. It’s extra special, what with Barbara’s recovery and the epiphany of our two grandsons.

Thursday, Dec. 3. Today, Barbara’s out and about, walking without a cane, and standing up almost straight! Thank God. I told her, “Take your cane to Young at Heart [our church senior group]; you’ll get more sympathy!” She did, but left it hanging on the coat rack.

*                *                      *

Forty-five years ago we promised to love each other “in sickness and in health.” Now’s the test. But with Barbara struggling to be independent, it isn’t hard. She’s thrilled with her new knees, and happy that she got them both done at the same time. We’re grateful for her healing, and we look forward to our future.

Now, if I could just get back into the master bedroom…