ROGER AND BARB REMEMBERED

Roger and Barb were members of a support group that Gwen and I participated in from almost the day she was diagnosed with cancer to the day she died.  Barb died about year or so after we first met her and Roger.  I recall meeting her in a hardware store a couple of months before she died.  She loved to garden, and was picking up some gardening materials.  She had retired as a teacher with the Ann Arbor Public schools, and, on that occasion, we reminisced about about our careers as educators. In many ways, the most difficult thing about cancer is that it is not obvious when someone has it.  Gwen and I used talk about how we were going about our life, enjoying our retirement, and then one day we went to see a doctor and were told that she was going to die. Unbelievable, even now.

We met Roger at Barb's funeral, and he told us a story about the first night he came home to a house without his spouse, a story that those of us who grieve  are very familiar with.  This was three and one half years ago, yet I remember it each time I come in the door and head over to the mantel to say hello to Gwen:

Roger and Barb Remembered

At the funeral, Roger told us a story

about how, on the night Barb died,

he was driving home,

when he saw a deer,

on the side of the road.

He stopped to let it cross the road.

Traffic piled up behind him.

I imagine car horns were blown.

Roger told us how, when he got home,

he rushed into the house,

anxious to tell Barb about the deer.

Then, he told us that,

of all the people there at Barb’s funeral,

he was most glad to see us.

We were part of his and Barb’s group.

We would understand his story.

We did.

 John A. Bayerl

 July 26, 2007 

Often, in the groups we attended, their true value always lay in knowing that the most important things never had to be said or talked about.  We always knew that they knew.