My Buddy Bill

I want to tell you a story. It is a story about love. It is a story about sacrifice. It is a tale of courage and devotion. It is about a life. This is the story of my buddy Bill. He is not in any history book. He doesn’t have a statue in the park. There is no heroic act attached to his name. But there should be.

We met early in the new century when I volunteered to visit with an elderly shut-in from my church. He was lonely and needed some company. Sometimes guys need to talk with guys.

So for the next two years, every Thursday evening, I would knock on his door. He would open it with a big smile, make me welcome, tell me a joke from an apparently endless supply, and we would sit down and talk. And talk we did. Work, war, politics, current issues on the news, those idiots in Washington, his kids, where to get the best corned beef, and also about his wife, Dorothy.

They had been married almost fifty years. As he spoke of her, his eyes would shine and a look of endless love would adorn his face. It was beautiful to see.

 He would speak about the good times and the hard times of their life together. The tides and the storms of living. Lately it had become mostly about the sad times.

Alzheimer’s disease was taking her away from him a bit at a time. She couldn’t drive anymore. Someone who had once filled the family table with a sumptuous feast on Thanksgiving Day, now couldn't be trusted to operate the stove.

And so Bill took over things. He had health problems of his own. Emphysema and an oxygen tank were his constant companions, but he coped. That’s the thing about Bill. He coped. It would took him an hour to move his portable oxygen to the car. He couldn’t walk 20 feet without a rest.

The years of Lucky Strikes and workplace fumes had taken their toll. Although he had never cooked very much, he took over cooking duties with a little help from meals on wheels. They still sat down to a dinner together every evening.

And so the story continued. The disease would take something away from Dorothy, and Bill would step up. He wanted to keep her in the home that she had known for almost 50 years.

In a quiet little corner of my town, a battle was being fought. As he struggled with the disease that was taking his life away with each labored breath, he was fighting to shelter the love of his life from her enemy; a disease that was both relentless and remorseless. And so it went.

When we were children, stories always had a happy ending. The princess was rescued, the Beast was transformed, and ever-after went happily on its way. But this is a true story and the ending isn’t so simple. He had to keep the doors secured because she had started to wander. I could see her decline in the changes of grooming and expression. His own disease was progressing, too. Emergency room visits and ambulances in the night became the norm.

As this tale nears its end, I would like to leave you with a thought. When the measure of a person is in looks, the mirror mirror on the wall will eventually disappoint. When the measure of a person’s life is in wealth, the big bad wolf can blow it all away.

When a life is measured in love, can we even fathom the end.

When I think of my Buddy Bill and his beloved Dorothy, I know their life didn’t end happily ever after, but their love did.