Though None Go with Me (22 page)

She nodded, tears welling up. “I'm going to miss him so.”

“You've been a wonderful wife, Elisabeth. A man could not ask for more.”

She felt as if his words were from God to encourage her. “Thank you, Ben.”

He nodded.

“I'd appreciate if you'd sing at the funeral.”

“I'd be honored.”

“I love ‘I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.' The preacher referenced it the night Will and I dedicated our lives.”

“It's the story of your life, Elisabeth.”

“How I wish that were true.”

Ben leaned forward. “May I pray for you, Elisabeth?” She nodded. “And may I take your hand?” She nodded again, appreciating his asking. He thanked God for Will's life and for the love Will and Elisabeth had shared, “that has been an example to me and many others of true commitment.”

As he finished, Elisabeth felt pressure on her knuckle. As he let go and they opened their eyes, she saw the glint of metal. “Ben,” she said, “are you wearing a ring?”

He nodded.

Elisabeth wondered if she could draw a breath. She fought for composure. “A wedding ring?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“Tell me?” she said, pretending the offense was merely that she didn't know. “Invite me, you mean?”

“We invited no one. One of my old seminary profs officiated, and he and his wife were witnesses.”

Elisabeth hated that this news devastated her as much as the word about Will. She wished she were somewhere she could scream, bang her fists on the wall, something. She forced herself to act normal. But what was normal now?

“So, someone I know?”

Ben looked surprised. “Dellarae.”

Elisabeth was speechless.

Ben walked with her out into the hall. “Doesn't seem like my type?”

Elisabeth shrugged, not trusting herself to speak.

“I need a little flamboyance, wouldn't you say?”

Elisabeth whispered, “You're fine the way you are.”

“She's a woman of God, Elisabeth. Transparent. What you see is what you get. She's fond of you.”

Elisabeth wanted to say, “And I of her,” but she could not respond. She was fighting rage, even hatred against Dellarae. Hatred?

“She's hoping we'll all be friends,” Ben said.

Elisabeth teetered on the edge of actually asking Ben if he would have chosen Mrs. Shockadance had he known Will's prospects. His awful news brought clarity to what she had not admitted even to herself: that her one hope, dream, and consolation was that Ben would one day be waiting at the end of her long and painful journey. She, and she had assumed he, had been obsessive about remaining appropriate until she was free. But hadn't they both been harboring hopes that the day would come when they could freely reveal their feelings toward each other? Had she only assumed he shared her longing?

Maybe he had simply wearied of waiting. Perhaps she had played her part so well that Ben had lost hope she would ever return to him. Fortunately, he had to assume it was the news about Will that rendered her uncommunicative. He walked her to her car and accepted her assurances that she was all right. Elisabeth pulled out, but rather than head south on Oakland Drive, she turned left and drove north to the deserted parking lot at University High School.

There she broke down and let the tears flow, pounding on the steering wheel and raging in the darkness at the injustice of it all. Exhausted and unable to pray, Elisabeth rued the future. Ben would naturally expect his new wife to accompany his solo at Will's funeral. Elisabeth would have to sit there, mourning her husband, mourning her firstborn and his inherited dementia, mourning the miles between her and her daughter, mourning the memory of her youngest child, and mourning the death of any future she had dreamed of with Ben. All the while she would see his choice of a life's mate, in all her glory, playing the piano.

When Elisabeth finally pulled herself together and headed toward Three Rivers, she sensed God checking her spirit as she itemized her sacrifices. Each time she dwelt on Bruce, something niggled at her brain. Something she had never considered. Was it possible that Bruce was spared by dying young?

Would he not have had a tendency toward the same affliction that affected his paternal grandfather, his father, and his older brother? In truth there was little consolation that Bruce may have avoided an ugly end by suffering what appeared a premature one. Yet this was something she had to consider.

That night in bed she tried to pray. “So it is to be just you and me the rest of the way?” she began. “No husband who can see me, talk with me, pray with me, touch me, hold me, kiss me, sleep with me? I don't understand your timing, and I wonder if Ben does. Take Will peacefully, that's all I ask.”

If this was a test, Elisabeth wanted to pass it. If God wanted to know he had her attention, her whole heart and soul and mind for the desire he had given her to increase his kingdom, she wanted to assure him he had it. Though it had never been easy and apparently never would be, she wanted to leave her situation, her circumstances, to him. She would serve and obey, not resignedly or only because she knew no other way. Rather, she would fulfill her commitment to a God she believed was trustworthy even when he didn't seem so.

For the next three weeks she visited Will every day at Three Rivers Hospital and kept little Lisa on weekends. Now that Will was dying, rather than vegetating as a mental patient, several friends from Christ Church also visited. Even Pastor Clarkson came, and Elisabeth had to give him credit. He was not afraid to look at Will and touch him and even address him. Most others talked with her as if Will were not there.

Elisabeth corresponded with Betty, pleading with her to somehow make it back for the funeral. Betty wanted to but made no promises.

At about three in the morning, Friday, October 4, 1946, Elisabeth was dreaming of the weekend with Lisa, now nearly ten months old. The phone awakened her. Elisabeth did not hurry. She knew what this message bore.

Making her way down the stairs, she prayed only that Will would hang on at least another hour. By the time she dressed, drove to the hospital, and reached his room, Will's breathing had decreased to nine respirations a minute.

“He doesn't appear to be struggling,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “His respiration should slow until it stops. I'll leave you with him. If you detect any discomfort, we can medicate him.”

Elisabeth sensed she was in the presence of God from the instant she was alone with Will. He lay on his side, his face to the wall. She pulled a chair there and forced his hand open, placing hers inside. His eyes were closed and he breathed deeply. She counted. Just barely nine a minute. A couple of minutes later, he was down to eight, then seven.

Slowly, slowly his breathing became shallower. When he was respiring only four times a minute, she wondered if each breath was his last. She spoke softly to him. “You're about to see Jesus,” she said. “I envy you. Say hello to our dads, will you? And Bruce? And would you tell God I have a lot to ask him?”

He took a long, deep breath, and let it out, and she heard nothing for more than twenty seconds. “Go quietly, my sweetheart. I love you with all my heart, and I always will. I'll love you with all that is in me until I see you again.”

Will inhaled deeply yet again. Elisabeth stood and pried her hand from his, leaning to embrace his bony frame. She pressed her face into his neck, one arm on his back, the other in his thinning hair. “Good-by, Will,” she said. “Good-by, my love.”

He exhaled and was gone.

The evening before the funeral, Elisabeth spent more than an hour with Pastor Clarkson. He seemed deeply impressed with her account of Will's life and their love story. They planned a simple ceremony for one o'clock: a welcome, an obituary, Ben's solo, Pastor's message, and the burial.

“Would you like a viewing in advance of the service?” Pastor said.

She shook her head. “I put myself in his place. I would not want people to see me that way.” She chose to place atop the casket his Fairbanks-Morse executive photograph from just before he was hospitalized.

The next day was unseasonably warm. Elisabeth put on a thin raincoat and waited outside her front door. She was moved by the offer of Frances Childs that she and Art swing by and drive her the few blocks to Christ Church.

“We'll sit with you, if you'd like,” Frances said. But Elisabeth declined. Benjy was not cleared to attend and Betty was under the weather in New Mexico, so Elisabeth had decided to sit alone with her thoughts in the first pew. Had she known how nice it would be outside, she'd have declined the ride as well.

Art and Frances were clearly uncomfortable, he clamming up and she jabbering. Elisabeth felt no need to humor her. She hoped one day she and Frances would again become the friends they had once been, ones who told each other everything.

Will's closed coffin stood beneath the pulpit, and the mourners shuffled past, smiling at the picture, some softly touching it, most pausing to greet Elisabeth.

She had felt so alone for so long in her vigil over Will that she was amazed at how many people filed by. The little sanctuary quickly filled with people from Snyder's Pharmacy, Fairbanks-Morse, the State Hospital (including staff and even family of other long-term patients), Three Rivers Hospital, the church, and the neighborhood. Elisabeth was grateful that Ben and Dellarae just silently shook her hand. A sinking feeling reminded her that she had lost both the men in her life yet again.

The seven junior girls from Elisabeth's Sunday school class were the last to be herded past. Their substitute teacher led the way with a stern look and a finger to her lips, obviously having scared the girls into silence. Elisabeth found herself suddenly animated, thrilled to see them. She greeted each by name and thanked them for coming. The last handed her a thick, business-size envelope with “Mrs. Bishop” hand-printed on it.

“It's from all of us,” towheaded Irene whispered. Her teacher shushed her, but Elisabeth winked and thanked her.

Elisabeth quietly worked open the envelope. Inside was an oversized sheet of lined writing paper that Elisabeth couldn't unfold all the way without making it visible to everyone. From what she could decipher, each girl had written a brief paragraph and signed her name.

One had written, “Mrs. Bishop, I'm sorry your husband died, even if he was in the State Hospital. From you I learned to pray and forgive people.”

Elisabeth couldn't wait to get to the rest of them, but she quickly put the sheet away when Joyce was ushered in next to her, carrying a sleeping Lisa. “Oh!” Elisabeth said, and the tears came. “I thought you weren't—”

“I know,” Joyce said. “I just thought she ought to be at her grandfather's funeral.”

“I'm so grateful,” Elisabeth said. Lisa awoke when Elisabeth took her, but she didn't stir during the ceremony.

Pastor Clarkson began with an obituary reciting Will Bishop's dates of birth and death, his employment and community service record, the names of his late son and survivors, and a litany of his spiritual life.

After Ben's solo, Pastor Clarkson told Will and Elisabeth's unusual story. “This was a man,” he concluded, “I would love to have known.”

Elisabeth pressed her lips together.
And I would have loved to have known him longer.

Joyce took Lisa and left immediately after the service, so Elisabeth was alone at the burial. She had to steel herself as she watched the casket being lowered in the churchyard cemetery. But that was not as difficult as enduring yet again the condolences of nearly everyone present. Elisabeth knew they meant well, every one. She simply wanted to go home with her memories and her too-fresh grief.

Propriety kept Elisabeth there until the last mourner left. She thanked Frances for the offer of a ride home but told her she preferred walking. She finally started home when the sun began flirting with the top of the trees. Two blocks away Elisabeth stopped and turned to see Christ Church silhouetted against the twilight. “Thank you, Lord,” she said, grateful for a church to come to not only several times a week, but also during every crisis in her life.

As she turned again toward home, Elisabeth's reverie was broken by the figure of a little girl poking a stick into a mud puddle at the next corner. She wore oversized black rubber boots and a red raincoat. As Elisabeth drew near, the blond hair told her it was Irene.

“Does your mother know you're still out, honey?”

“Mm-hm,” Irene said, staring at the water. “Daddy too.”

“Your Daddy's home?”

Irene nodded.

“I didn't see him at—”

“Didn't want to come. Said your husband really died a long time ago.”

“In a way, he did.”

“I know, Miz Bishop. You told us. I already changed my prayer list.”

“You did?”

Irene threw her stick into the street and turned to look at Elisabeth. “I took him off the top and put you there. That's all right, isn't it? I mean, he's dead now, right?”

“You put me on top?”

“You were second already, so now you're first.”

“I'm so happy you still have your prayer list, Irene.”

Irene took her glove off and picked a stone out of the mud. “We all do. All your girls.”

“That means a lot to me.”

“You need a lot of prayer.”

Elisabeth had to smile in spite of everything. “I do?”

“'Course! You have a boy in prison, a sick daughter you haven't seen for years, a dead husband, a dead boy, a daughter-in-law who doesn't come to church, and a new granddaughter. See you Sunday. Bye!”

Irene ran off before Elisabeth could respond. The little girl ran around the back of her house, and a door slammed.

Elisabeth finally made her way home and walked across the painted wood porch that led to the door that had survived the fire and had been on that house since the day Will bought it. She entered to the dark comfort of familiarity.