You would think a 69-year-old man could take care of himself while his wife goes away for a few days to help her daughter wouldn’t you? Well don’t plan on it—you don’t know what will happen!
As you all know, Ed and I are living in Los Angeles waiting for Ed to get a lung transplant at Cedar Sinai Hospital. Ed is far from an invalid, although he is on oxygen. He goes to respiratory and yoga therapy five days a week and takes care of himself better than I could. So when our daughter, Diana was notified that there was a baby girl for them to adopt, I decided to fly out to help her. Diana and Jason had known for three weeks that the baby would be born on March 30, and had baby showers, bought everything for the baby, gotten the room ready, and were planning on meeting with the mother on the day I flew into Chicago.
I was changing planes in Dallas—the worst airport in the world—when I got a call from Diana. “Cancel the rest of your flight; go back to Los Angeles, Mom,” she told me. My heart dropped! Had Ed gotten a call from the hospital that they had a lung for him? We’d talked about what might happen if that occurred and planned that I would turn around and go right back to be with him.
“Okay, Diana,” I said, trying to hear over the noise of the airport, “what is going on?”
“Mom,” her voice broke and she began to cry, “The birth mother decided to keep the baby. We don’t have a baby for you to help with. You can turn around and go back to L. A. to be with Dad.”
“Diana,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It will be okay. I’m going to come anyway. I will be there at 4:05. Can you pick me up? Or do I need to make other arrangements?”
She explained that now they weren’t going to the hospital or getting a baby, they had plenty of time to get me at the airport. My visit to help with a new baby became a visit to help my daughter deal with her loss.
Ed called me several times a day teasing how I had abandoned him, and he wasn’t eating enough. Once he texted me, “This is to notify you that we have admitted your husband to the hospital for lack of nourishment. He was found lying in the street begging for food.” HA! I had left him a freezer full of frozen dinners (not homemade but still he had picked them out), a fridge full of food, and a city with more restaurants than there are cockroaches. This is a man who had survived two tours of Vietnam and 46 ½ years of my cooking. We I both knew he could take care of himself for a few days. He was just trying to make me feel guilty for being with Diana. I refused to take his joking seriously, and did what I could to help Diana and Jason.
Sunday was Easter and Ed’s birthday, so I expected everyone to call him. It was also our church’s General Conference, with two sessions, broadcast on TV at 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. (Chicago time). Ed had driven to the church to see the priesthood conference the night before and seen and talked to many of his friends. He had talked to me afterwards, so I wondered if some of the church members would invite him to Easter dinner and to listen to conference with them, so I didn’t call him Sunday morning before conference.
Our children started calling between conference sessions to ask if I knew why they couldn’t get in touch with Ed. I told them no, I’d talked to him the night before and he’d been fine. They said they had tried all morning to call to wish him “Happy Birthday,” and his phone went right into voice mail.
Now, we are always checking our cell phones to make sure they are charged and on because we are always awaiting THE CALL FROM THE HOSPITAL! So I tried to reach Ed. Just as the children said; it went right into voice mail. I wasn’t worried; maybe he’d left his phone in the car, and forgotten it. He’d remember, and get it before long and call me.
All day Ed’s siblings and our children called me when they couldn’t reach Ed. Ed’s siblings weren’t aware I had abandoned him and was halfway across the country, while “who knew what was going on in Los Angeles while he was weak and alone.” Our children were less understanding, and they kept calling me, even though I promised them I would call as soon as I knew anything.
“Maybe he is at friends’ home, enjoying Easter dinner and conference with them. If so and he left his phone at home, we won’t hear from him until after conference,” I told them.
“It is possible they called him to come in and get his transplant and he knows I’ll be home tomorrow morning and he just decided to wait until it is all over before he has them notify me since I can’t get home earlier anyway,” was another of my rationales.
Finally, it was 6:30 p.m. Pacific time and 8:30 p.m. Chicago time and I still hadn’t heard from Ed all day—the longest all week I’d gone without talking to him. I decided I needed to know what was going on in Los Angeles. I looked up the phone number of our apartment manager, with the phone in my hand ready to call her and ask her to look in on Ed to see if he was alive or not, when Ed called. He didn’t have a clue why we were all upset not to have heard from him all day, and on his birthday no less. .
“I had a very restful day. I just stayed home and watched conference and rested.”
“What about your phone?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. It ran down, so I recharged it this morning when I realized it was dead. I didn’t know that it had turned itself off and had been turned off all day until I decided to call you just now.”
“Didn’t you wonder if anyone would call you on your birthday? Or on Easter?”
“Not really! Was anyone worried?”
“Yes, just everyone in the family. Diana is texting them all right now letting them know you are fine—that your phone was just off all day.”
“Oh, yeah, it looks like I have a dozen text messages and phone messages. Well, you’ll be home to take care of me tomorrow anyway.”
“Yes, dear. Tomorrow I’ll be home to take care of you and make sure you keep your phone on IN CASE THERE IS A LUNG AVAILABLE TO TRANSPLANT.”
Yes, you shouldn’t ever leave your husband home alone. He might decide he enjoys being alone so much he may turn the phone off and get away from it all—PERMANENTLY.
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