This is the hardest “chores” I have had to write. On May 9, I got a call from the Elms telling me that my best friend and husband Dean had passed away at 7:15 that morning.
I was fixing my breakfast, and then was going to go to the Elms. He had been there a week.
Everything had happened so fast. I knew at some time I would not be able to give him the care he needed here at home. I had asked Debbie at the Elms if there was an opening for a private room, to please call me. In a short time (it seemed) she called, and I said let me think about it. God’s hands had to be involved in all the happenings the following days. The decline was so fast, and working with wonderful Hospice workers and staff at the Elms helped us to understand what exactly was happening.
Our two daughters have been my “rocks” ever since.
Making arrangements, calling to see if I was OK, writing thank you notes for so many donations to either Hospice, a WIU ag scholarship, or Macomb FFA. Cards, phone calls, visits from family, friends and neighbors have eased my sadness...not the emptiness...that will be with me forever.
He’s still with me. I look around the farm and see the barn he and my Dad built from lumber saved from the old house that was here and torn down before we had the new one built all those years ago. I see so many welding projects that he made...gates still in use, gate trailers, waterways in fields, fences built, tools used, cattle and calves and memories of days when we would work together to save a new calf’s life.
I could go on and on, but right now I can hardly see the computer keyboard.
We had a good life together, and I am so thankful he didn’t lay and suffer a long time. I guess the poem I saved a long time ago says it all: God’s Farm...author unknown...
God needs someone in heaven to plow and plant the rows.
And when He calls me, I know that I must go. Remember that I won’t be gone. I will just be away, working on God’s farm, til we’re united again one day. There will be no storms in heaven and the fields are long and straight. When it’s time for you to join me, I’ll be waiting beside heaven’s gate.
Remember, until that day arrives, when once more our lives we’ll share, to look in the green fields growing, and you’ll see me working there.
For now, goodbye best friend, husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, farmer...’til we meet again.
Sharon Chenoweth is a resident and farmer of McDonough County. Her column focuses on rural life and will be featured every other week in the Community News Brief Friday Edition.
