During this transition period of preparation to moving into an independent living facility I thought I’d keep in touch by this means . Perhaps every other week I’ll do a “keeping in touch” essay so as to keep you informed on our progress, and to let you know how Ouida is faring. This is appropriate because so many of you are personal friends who are gracious enough to be concerned for our welfare. There are also many of you whom we have come to know and love whom we have not yet met. There are friendships of this nature. It is even true of our Lord -- “whom having never seen we love” (1 Peter 1:8).

Our daughter Phoebe at last lost her long battle with multiple health problems and died on April 11 at age 52. She had once again been dismissed by the hospital and assigned to rehab. But after only a few days, due to breathing problems, she had to reenter the hospital, and her condition continued to deteriorate. I was with her in ICU the day before she died. When I held her hand and spoke to her, she opened her eyes and looked at me, but I am not sure she was aware. Early the next morning she was gone.

Her husband was at her side early that morning, but, as fate would have it, he had gone out for coffee when she breathed her last. He had signed a form instructing the hospital not to take any resuscitation measures. Considering her hopeless condition, she needed to go. It was the end of a seven-month hospital/rehab ordeal. It was also the end of a difficult and troubled life.

When Brady Bryce, our minister at Singing Oaks Church of Christ who did her service, asked me what I had learned from Phoebe, I told him she had taught me to love and accept as equals the unlovely, a lesson I was slow to learn. She usually had one or more homeless or marginalized people in her home. There were three such ones there at the time of her death! Her son Ashley related to Brady that she once met a couple at a truck stop -- where her husband was then working -- who had no place to spend the night, and brought them home with her, complete strangers.

Through the years I would remind her that she hardly had the resources to care for her own family, and yet she keeps bringing in these people -- people I must shamefully admit I would be reluctant to have in my own home. It is easy to love my many dear friends here in Denton, who went out of their way to comfort us through this ordeal, for they are such lovely people. It is something else to love and accept as equals those that Phoebe loved -- and even to love Phoebe herself, who was sometimes unlovely. But I loved her -- and she taught me to love those that she loved.

The day after her death I drove to her house to sit with her bereaved husband, himself an illiterate who makes his living picking up bricks at a brick yard. The three live-ins, all women, humbly showered me with embraces, telling me how much Phoebe loved her daddy. As I visited these people, the poorest of the poor, I thought to myself, “Here I am a retired professor, a PhD, wealthy, live in an upscale neighborhood, a church-goer, but I am no better than they are.” Phoebe helped me to learn that lesson.

Ouida mustered the strength to attend both the visitation and the funeral, where we were blessed by the tender loving care of scores of friends. We were concerned that it might be too much for Ouida. Our son David, in from his home in Missouri, and Ouida’s sister Maudine, here from New Mexico, were prepared to usher her back home if necessary. But she is bearing both her illness and the grief better than I handle the grief. She is the battle-scarred warrior who hangs in while I am the beaten- down sissy. Only today, a week later, she told me she was at peace with it all, while I still hang on the ropes. “God is in control” she reminds me.

It may be because I felt Phoebe always needed me, considering her troubled life -- too troubled to detail -- and that she still must need me. I may be like the parent who finds it more difficult to lose an afflicted child. While they need us, we also need them. It is painful to let go what might be described as “a glorious burden.”

At her request we buried her beside her four-year old daughter and her first husband, both of whom drowned, at different times and under different circumstances, and near her 17-month old granddaughter, who also died accidentally just six months ago. It is the Old Alton cemetery, the oldest in Denton county, dating back to 1852. One cannot be interred there unless he has family buried there.

During Phoebe’s long ordeal in the hospital I would tell her that there was a special prayer, one that Jesus commended, that she could always pray in her heart, even when on an ventilator -- “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Brady made reference to that in his heart-warming presentation, assuring those gathered that we would all do well to pray that prayer and commit ourselves to the mercy of God -- a loving God who is full of compassion and eager to forgive.

We have put up a deposit for an apartment in an independent living facility in the heart of Denton. There is a waiting list, but they think they will have a place for us by July. We are making progress in slimming down -- from a 2200 square foot home to a 640 square foot apartment. So long as I can take my sweetheart wife with me the amount of space will not matter. We look both to the now and to God’s tomorrow.

Lord’s day week, April 29, I will speak on “The Transforming Friendship” at the Plymouth Park Church of Christ in Irving, next to Dallas. To the adult class I will speak on “The Genius of the Stone-Campbell Movement.” This is the church that gave its facility to ACU for a Dallas campus, and the university is already using it. But the congregation reserved the right to continue meeting there. I hope Ouida will be able to be there also. The address is 1710 W. Airport Fwy, Irving. Join us!