The Bully Didn't Win

Love Did!

In December of 2021, amidst all of the preparations for Christmas, including getting ready to preach/lead worship on Christmas Eve, we discovered that my wife, Jan, had cancer.

The doctor’s office called 20 minutes after the scan. A really bad sign. She had cancer all throughout her bones.

The next scan showed cancer in the liver. That news was even worse.

A third scan suggested that perhaps things were not as bad as we feared.

The biopsy showed that Jan had a rare form of cancer called neuroendocrine cancer. It started in the pancreas but was not pancreatic cancer. It entered her bones but wasn’t bone cancer. It invaded her liver but wasn’t liver cancer.

The good news: it was not curable, but treatable.

And so the treatments began.

6 months of chemo therapy, two weeks on, two weeks off.

Radiation therapy on her thyroid.

Two radiation therapies on her liver.

More chemo therapy.

A newer radiation treatment back in January 2025 that hopefully would put the cancer on hold for 2-3 years.

It didn’t. 8 months later it hit the liver again.

In January of this year Jan underwent two liver procedures the doctors felt confident would put the cancer in the liver in check.

But she didn’t recover. Scans revealed a mass on her liver that the procedure could not get to.

Still fatigued, she began a daily targeted chemo pill, which would cause more fatigue. A few days into that treatment she started getting a bit foggy headed, most likely, the doctor said, the result of the liver releasing toxins into her brain. So pooping and peeing became the words of the day. And walking. Which she really had no strength to do.

Let me pause and say that in between those various therapies we won some wonderful moments. We were able to travel. We were able to go out to the mall or to dinner. Life, in those in-between times was pretty normal. And I am grateful for every moment.

Last Wednesday (April 29) coming home from my early morning walk, I found her on the floor. She didn’t hurt herself, thankfully, or my guilt would be much worse!

A few hours later the doctor called for his weekly check in. After telling him that story he said that the blood draw suggested that she was not getting better and that we had a decision to make. A radical form of chemo that has a 20% cure rate, or hospice.

We already knew the answer but asked if, by taking her to the hospital, we could clear up Jan’s head a bit to make sure she was on board with hospice (which I knew she was).

To our surprise, as a result of the CT in the hospital, we discovered that the fog was not from the liver but from a fast-growing brain tumor.

Two days later, just after midnight, we brought her home for hospice care.

She had had an MRI just before leaving and had some medication to keep her calm. She never really came out of it. She said, “I love you,” as they wheeled her off and that was the last time I heard her speak.

It was so good to have her home. We put her in a room that she had devoted to her love for all things ancestry. The walls were filled with pictures of generations of family members, surrounding her with love.

The kids and grandkids came over in the early afternoon to begin the process of saying goodbye. A hospice nurse friend stopped by in the early evening. She said that it was time to get my siblings over. They were all there in 10 minutes.

We spent the next several hours around her bed, talking, crying, laughing, talking to Jan.

My daughter, after helping Jan shift in the bed, told me that it was time. I needed to spend some time alone with her.

After talking with her for a few moments I asked Alexa to play Jan’s favorite hymn, It is Well with My Soul, sung by Larnelle Harris. Then Make Me an Instrument by the Archers, the song we used at our wedding. I can’t remember all of the songs I had Alexa play but they included Happy Man and Home Where I Belong by BJ Thomas, who had become a good friend. The Wedding Song (There Is Love) by Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who had nick-named Jan “Sparky” years ago. Then Weekend in New England, by Barry Manilow. That song was a hit when I had to leave Jan to head off to school in Seattle. It became our song. Whenever we heard it I would drop what I was doing and give her a hug and/or a kiss.

By now my daughter, son, and one of my grandson’s had joined me.

Her breathing relaxed and slowed.

“Alexa, play It is Well by Sandi Patti.”

To the best of my ability I kept my eyes on Jan and watched her breathe. Just as the song ended she took a breath. I asked Alexa to play My Tribute (To God Be the Glory) by Andrae Crouch, one of her mom’s favorites.

But Jan had stopped breathing.

All was now well with her soul.

**

Cancer is a bully. It batters. It intimidates. It humiliates. It laughs at life as it slowly eats away at it.

But the bully lost.

Grace won. Love won. Life won.

Those last hours with Jan… with her family… her children… her grandchildren… my siblings who had grown up with her… my time alone lost in the soundtrack of our life together holding her hand… were some of the most sacred, loving, magical moments of our 46 years of marriage.

Because Love wins. It always wins.

Take that, cancer!

The last “conversation” Jan and I had was Saturday, mid-morning. The hospice nurse said I should ask Jan, loudly, to open her eyes.

She did. For a moment. She saw I was there.

Since we started dating (over 50 years ago) we had a non-verbal way of saying I love you. We would squeeze each other’s hand three times.

I squeezed. Three times.

She squeezed back. Three time.

Take that, you bully!

**

I may not know how heaven works.

But I do know what heaven is like.

I lived with her for 46 years!