God of the Little Things

It is hard to believe that it has been three weeks since Joseph left us. It feels like yesterday and at the same time like it was years ago. So much has changed. I decided to make a very small list of the ways God was there for us in the last few days in how the little decisions that we made correctly turned out to be huge. He is the God of the little things.

So here goes:

1. We brought Holly with us to Memphis: this was her first return trip since we moved out of the Barr's house in Feb. Every other time that we came for checkups and scans we left her with grandparents. Gillian and I were both growing concerned that she was beginning to feel left out and forgotten. Also Joseph specifically asked for her to go this time which was unusual. She got to be there with him for his last day of conciousness and although it was a little hectic getting her back here (thanks uncle Matt) it was such a blessing for us and for Joe P that she was there on his birthday.

2. We decided to stay with the Barrs: usually when we returned to Memphis we wanted to stay in the St. Jude hotel (the Grizzly House) because it was close and his appointment were always in the morning. Also we wanted some privacy to be able to discuss things if needed. But Jennifer and Matt were living in Matt's dad's house because of a catastrophic hot water heater explosion in their house which meant that they had lots of room for all of us. So we decided that it would be easier to stay with them even though they were thirty minutes from St. Jude. So we got the blessing of being with family after hearing the horrible news, and we got to celebrate his birthday with cousin WK who Joseph loves so much. We also got to see the dogs and one of the last pictures we took of Joseph was him snuggling on the couch with millie his favorite dog. It also helped us to make our quick exit from Memphis and allowed Jennifer to drive Gill, Joe and me home. If I had been driving on that trip, we would have most likely crashed.

3. I think this is the biggest; we changed one of his appointments: This is going to take a while to explain, so bear with me. I had grown so angry over the course of our time in and out of St. Jude at how long we had to wait for everything. It is an amazing place, but there is so much waiting for everything that it eventually grinds on you. They also schedule appointments in a seemingly random way. When we arrived we got his schedule for the week. It had appointments from Tuesday through Thursday. On Thursday we only had one appointment and it was with the Quality of life team. We considered skipping it since we didn't really know what it was, but I decided to see if they could change it so we could leave on Wednesday. Normally they are never able to change appointments because of all the patients they have, but she was able to schedule it Wednesday after his MRI. After I got it changed, I told Gillian and she reminded me that we had to be there Thursday and Friday anyway to start the new chemo, but I had forgotten since it wasn't yet on the schedule. Anyways, we just left it for Wednesday. So we met with a doctor from the Quality of Life team while Joseph was waking up from his MRI. The conversation was about his last days and was meant to get us thinking about what we wanted. We decided that hospice care would be best and we spent a lot of time talking about everything including what those last days would look like for him and for us. It was a great meeting and it really helped us deal with a lot of issues. At the end of the meeting he started to call around and was about to get us enrolled in the hospice care. I stopped him and said that we're not there yet. We're about to start a new chemo and we don't even know what this new MRI showed yet. Then he asked us if he could go look at it now and we emphatically said yes. Normally when he had MRIs we wouldn't hear the results until his next appointment, usually on the next day. Anyways, he came back the terrible news and we immediately got him into a hospice care. Joseph went into a coma that night and died the following day. If we had not changed that appointment, we probably would not have heard about his MRI that day and would have shown up the next day with him in a coma and his last hours would be in a hospital far away from his extended family. Instead we got to rush home and everyone got to see him and talk to him one last time.

4. Joseph made it back to Franklin: We decided to spend that night in Memphis and leave for home the next morning. On the morning he died, a hospice nurse in Memphis came to see him and told us that he didn't have very long. We didn't even know that he had slipped into a coma overnight. He had been awake from around 1-3 that morning and was talking and eating and refusing to go back to sleep. Deep down I doubted that the doctors would be able to correctly say that he only had a few days left and thought that maybe we'd have a couple of weeks, so I guess I didn't think that the end would come so quickly. When the nurse told us that he had hours, we decided to sprint home to be with everyone. Jennifer drove Gillian, Joe and me while Matt had the two girls in another car. Gillian and I held Joseph the whole time in the back seat. It was an awful drive. On two occasions he stopped breathing for over a minute and I couldn't feel a pulse and we thought he had gone. But then he would gasp and start breathing and pumping blood again. That was so painful to go through more than once, but I had been praying all morning that he would make it back home. It was like he was refusing to quit; we kept telling him that Mimi and Nana and everyone else was waiting for him back at the house with lots more birthday presents. Anyways, we made it home and was able to be with everyone again. It was totally an answer to prayer.

So there's a short list of the little ways God was with us in the end. It's amazing how so many small decisions turn out to be really big ones. He has also been with us in the big decisions and prayer requests over the past year providing physical and spiritual needs, but I can't stop thinking about how things could have turned out had He not been there for us at the end. As horrible as it all was, it was the best it could have been.