Death: A Love Story

Jan’s Jerrle Video Tribute

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Even at her worst moments, Jerrle’s smile was infectious. This was one of her many visits to Edward Hospital in Naperville for treatment–with her trauma softened by the visit from a hospital comfort dog.

A year ago today, as the sun began its tangerine sneak through the oaks and maples that dot our property, the best person I ever knew flew out our bedroom window to dance among the clouds. Her name was Jerrle Miller Gericke. For forty years she was my love, wife, and best friend. And then, with one short, snorting gasp, she was gone. Metastatic breast cancer claimed a giant at 6:02 a.m., and life as I knew it changed forever.

I’m writing this essay through moistened eyes to accompany a video produced by our dear friend Janice Page. I played this video tribute to a gathering of friends after Jerrle’s funeral, and I will play it for you now. The music is Petula Clark’s “I’ll Never Live Without Your Love,” the most emotionally perfect song to describe how I feel about the woman with whom I lived my entire adult life. The video is at the top of this post. I love this tribute and hope you do too. Jerrle’s thousand-watt smile at the end is worth the few minutes it takes to watch the whole thing.

Metastatic cancer is a slavering beast, with the soul of the ferryman crossing the River Styx. “The Mets” spit cancer cells like machine-gun bullets, rending flesh and organs faster than oncologists can keep up. From Memorial Day 2014 to that chilly, softly lit dawn of August 2015, I watched the Mets eat my wife ounce by ounce, piece by piece, punching this muscle and scarring that organ, till it finally reveled in the gluttony of its destruction: Killing the nerves in her GI system. No food equals no life, and when the ensuing starvation reduced her to eighty pounds, death mercifully befell her. But though her body shorted out, her spirit, life-spark, joy of family, friends, beagles, Mallard ducks, noir films, reading, and the Chicago Cubs and Black Hawks never died. Her love for me remained as fierce and protective as the day we met. Yes, her heart stopped. But her love won’t because it’s in the sunbeams that caress us and the stars that twinkle at night.

To anyone who knows Jerrle’s nuclear-level organizational skills—lookin’ at you, Rose and Jan!–she’s already built a rambling cloud house filled with memories, ceramic pigs, and a big, comfy recliner for the day those autumn winds blow for me. There’s plenty of room for anyone who wants to join us. We’ll have pizza, ice cream, milkshakes and beer, because in Cloudland, calories don’t count.

shane_jerrle_2013My year without her has been . . . bizarre. She died on Monday, I buried her on Thursday, and my (then-new) novel The Fury launched on Friday—what would have been Jerrle’s 60th birthday–necessitating a Happy Author Face for the hundred-plus fans jamming the launch-day bookstore, because she and I agreed that the show must go on. A month later my gallbladder went rogue, forcing me into emergency surgery. After I healed, I decided to clean the basement (the house was in the midst of total remodeling, hence the mess), and nearly died from an ammonia spill. I threw out my lower back in December, again in the spring, and a third time in July, the day I was supposed to fly to New York for Thrillerfest, the literary conference I had a small part in founding a decade ago. (My back spasms were since diagnosed as lumbar spinal arthritis. It’s not curable, but can be effectively managed, making my neurological pain specialist my new BFF. Combined with six weeks of painful physical therapy, intense daily exercise, and 35 pounds of weight loss—65 more to go; I plan to look like a Navy SEAL by this time in 2017–I’m back on my feet again.)

But my pain wasn’t just physical. In October, I tumbled into a deep, dark well of desperation. It wasn’t depression, it was overwhelming sadness at losing half my soul. Jerrle and I were married our entire adult lives, having met in college. Since we were both 60—technically, she died four days short, but I threw her a friend-studded birthday party in our bedroom eight days earlier, so as far as I’m concerned she reached that milestone fair and square, and who’s to say otherwise?—my past year has been a series of train derailments called We Becoming Me. It’s exhausting to run my life by myself, and I wind up far more zombie-eyed than I should. I’m still alone, literally and romantically, but that suits me fine for now. It may suit me forever, or it may not. I’m taking life day by day.

My sisters, Diana Gericke and Marianne Taylor, remain my guardian angels. They flew in from Arizona the day Jerrle left the hospital for home hospice, and they took care of us both in the final three weeks of her life. When the oncologist—a guardian angel in his own right—told us there was nothing more he could do after a year of fighting multi-organ tumors, kidney failure, esophageal collapse, stomach and bowel upheavals, thrown blood clots, deadly MRSA, and deadlier sepsis with his counter-missiles of chemo, surgery, radiation, stents, clot-catchers, Vancomycin bombs, and needle-suction of her abdomen, which was excruciatingly distended from the cancer juice—technically, “ascites”—excreted by the thousands of micro-Mets leeching off her abdominal wall. The moment Dr. Joseph Kash said he’d run out of medical options, Jerrle announced she would die not at the hospital, but in our home, in our bedroom, next to me, hand in hand, the same way we fell asleep every night. When we got to the house I called the hospice people, then e-mailed my sisters for help. They hopped the red-eye that night, and for three long weeks helped me help Jerrle die with as much dignity—and as little pain—as love and pharmacology could manage.

It worked. Her final breath came in her sleep.

In the last days of her life, the only thing she worried about was me. She knew I could take care of myself—I’ve always been self-reliant—but feared I would quit writing because of her death. She read seventy books a year, loved that I was a novelist, and couldn’t stand the thought of me not putting words to paper. She laid out that fear on the morning of the night she would start her final journey. I promised I would get back to the keyboard when I was ready. She hedged her bets by asking our friends to herd me back to Wordland if I stumbled or strayed. She was determined that I continue what I’ve loved doing since, literally, second grade: Tell Stories.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure that would actually happen. I haven’t written anything but Facebook posts in a year. I haven’t read one single book. It all seemed so fucking pointless . . .

But then I climbed out of that deep, smelly hole. I saw her in the sun and the stars, and I smiled. I was sick of being tired, and aghast at not caring about anything. So I’m back, not yet whole, but no longer pathetic. I am now the first draft of my second life.

So, Jerrle, this essay is the start of my promise to you. Many more are in the works, from essays to short stories to full novels. So you stay warm and comfy in those blue and fluffy skies, I will continue to write the books that you love to read, and I’ll join you in the cloud bed you built when the autumn winds finally blow for me.

Promise made, promise kept.


Comments

19 responses to “Death: A Love Story”

  1. Carole Schultz Avatar
    Carole Schultz

    Beautifully written, Shane. I, too, lost my husband to cancer; he had just turned 58. It’s a long, hard road, but there is light at the end of that seemingly, endless tunnel.

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      Thank you, Carole, for sharing your story about your husband dying. It is difficult, isn’t it?

  2. And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!” Exeunt fighting.

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      You are a Famus Riter your very own self, Paul 🙂

  3. Jeri Grag Avatar
    Jeri Grag

    Shane, this is so beautiful! what a tribute to Jerrle. But you must write again. She would want that for you!

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      Working on it, Jeri, with hopes of getting back to it by the end of the year.

  4. So this is True Love.

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      Indeed it was. Is. Still working on the proper tense of it all …

  5. Blessings on you, Shane. This has been a miserable year for you. I hope you find your writing to be a solace and that you will continue in better health. Your writing on FB and on your blog has been heartfelt all year long.

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      Thanks, Jody. A miserable year plus the miserable year prior to it watching her die in stages. I don’t recommend it to anyone! But I’m feeling better and coping better, as life goes on. Thank you for “heartfelt” on my writing. I’d hoped people saw it that way.

  6. Donna Farrell ahlberg Avatar
    Donna Farrell ahlberg

    Truly, maddeningly you love deep. You have been blessed

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      Without deeply felt love there is no deeply felt loss, so I wouldn’t trade my pain because that would have meant not having the love that caused the pain. But I sure wish I had her back to avoid all of it. Yes, I was blessed in my life’s partner, and for that I am delighted still.

  7. You made me weep, not just for you and your beloved wife, but for all the people in the world who will never know that level of devotion from their partner. Your words, so filled with love and anguish, moved me beyond description.

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      Connie, what a delightful thing to say. Thank you so much for writing this!

  8. Amy Woodward Avatar
    Amy Woodward

    Shane, I am so sorry for your rough year. I will be waiting for your next book. It was nice to meet you last spring in Scottsdale. Am happy you are feeling better now. I know you miss your wife. My daughter has been gone 10 & 1/2 yrs. and I still miss her terribly, but it is easier now. God Bless You & please keep on writing.

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      I will keep writing, Amy, and I’m really really sorry about your loss of your daughter. All such losses are tragic. And it was so cool to see you at Poisoned Pen!

  9. Wendy Unger Avatar
    Wendy Unger

    Love is Grand – too bad it hurts so much! But we’re so blessed to have someone in our lives we can love so much…

    1. shanegericke Avatar
      shanegericke

      You bet it is. Without great love, life would be cold and meaningless.

  10. Hallie Paul Avatar
    Hallie Paul

    Shane, I was heartbroken when I read this post (I’ve kept up with you every year or so via internet). Nothing compares to losing the half of you that you loved the most. I lost my Mike in January of this year, quickly and without warning. It’s always bad and it’s always too soon.
    The healing begins but you/I will never be the same.

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