God Has Taken ANOTHER Loved One Away From Me

This morning (Wednesday, 30 April) at about 10:25 a.m. Rocky Mountain Time, Janalee Ravitts, born Janalee Green, was launched up to Heaven from an emergency room in Aurora, Colorado. The cause of death was a massive heart attack, for which no warning signs of any sort had been detectable. In fact, only two days before, she had had a doctor's appointment in which her vital signs looked good. None of us knows when God will summon us to meet Him. But I do know that my Jan, like my Mary before her, went there clothed in the righteousness of her Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The biggest apparent problem Jan had been facing in her last earthly weeks had been her worsening mobility. The chronic headaches which had plagued her since well before I married her were at least somewhat under control, as she regularly took no less than six prescription medications in this connection. (Maybe those very medications were exhausting her heart, though I have no evidence that this was so.) In the area of sensory impairment arising from her brain injury in the car crash in 2001--in fact, EXACTLY seven years ago yesterday--she had been enjoying some "breakthroughs" of being able to taste and smell things. But her ability to walk was dramatically worsening, making her feel embarrassed to be seen outdoors. And she was losing enthusiasm for life; her appetite was less, and she was not so often eager to have me read books to her, though on her last afternoon she did have me read some to her (from Janette Oke's Christian novel "A Quiet Strength") in the bedroom where she lay.

Part of the walking problem was in her mind. Poor Jan had fallen down several times over the last two months, and a fear of falling was practically paralyzing her. I enrolled her for physical therapy--ironically, at Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital, where my Mary had once been an employee!--and I was experimenting with what was the best way I could hold her up walking. A side-by-side "promenade" stance was working best, as long as she had any strength left; but in the last few days, the only way she could move appreciably forward on her feet was while actually held in my arms, face to face, with me retreating before her. This was more and more turning into outright carrying her.

Yesterday, she said her legs were hurting--which at first I logically supposed was muscle cramping from the vigorous therapy of Monday afternon. But the real trouble was that, for reasons that were never determined, her left leg had swollen up hideously. I had her lie with the leg elevated, and called her physician to get the soonest possible appointment to examine it.

This morning was when she was supposed to be seen about the swelling. It gives me some little comfort to be able to say that, when Jan opened her eyes in bed this morning, she saw me right there beside her and smiled. After breakfast (cooked by me as usual), Jan said she wanted to brush her teeth. So I wheeled her in her wheelchair (bought only a matter of weeks ago) as far as our bedroom door, where I had to lift her out. As I was "embrace-walking" her toward the bathroom, Jan said to me, "I'm sorry I'm such a pain." I replied, "I'm sorry you are, too." Based on our many past conversations, she knew that I was not saying this to suggest that she was at all to blame for her disabilities. I went on: "But you can't help it. And I'll never stop loving you, because you're my sweetheart. A mobility-challenged sweetheart, but still my sweetheart." This pleased her.

I thank God that I did say this to her; because not long afterward I was nagging her on to make an effort to keep her feet under her, as I took her out of the wheelchair at our front door and tried to help her to the van, intending then to bring the wheelchair along. In our last two-way conversation on Earth, Jan said little else but "I can't!" As we reached the van, she could no longer keep her feet under her at all. I tried to place a lawn chair for her to rest on...but she was already sagging down like a wet sandbag...and then her eyes rolled back.

She did not die instantly, though. She coughingly breathed for a little while, not responding to anything I said. So I dialed 911 on my cellphone, then tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while awaiting the ambulance and paramedics. Saying that she was "agonal," they worked furiously over her on the driveway, then loaded her into the ambulance, in which I rode with them to the hospital.

A chaplain named David Reeves waited with me in a "quiet room." Then Doctor Robert Howe came in and told me that Jan's heart was totally non-functional, despite everything they could do. As soon as they gave up the CPR, she would die. But on the basis of his extensive medical experience, he assured me that Jan would be able to hear me if I came and spoke to her at once. I therefore went to where she lay, bristling with medical hardware, and said approximately these words:

"Jan, sweetheart, it's Joe. I hope you know I've tried to do what was best for you. I wish I could have done more. I'm sorry if I failed you in anything, but you know I love you. If there's anything you would have wanted to say to me, just remember it while you're waiting in Heaven; and you can say it to me when we're together again, in the place where there is no jealousy or pain." (The reference to jealousy was because Jan had sometimes been jealous of her predecessor Mary.) "I promise you I'll try to help comfort your family. Pray for us up there." Shortly after I said this, Jan was hearing another voice saying, "Welcome to Heaven, My dear child."

Doctor Howe was later to explain the evidence which proved people on the edge of death could still hear speech. Thus he promised he was not making it up when he insisted that Jan had heard my loving farewell. And he added that, veterans of life and death though he and his staff were, my words had moved them all to tears. (Perhaps this was a very early start in fruit being borne by Jan's grain of wheat fallen into the earth.)

Because I experienced chest pains after Jan passed away, they detained me at the hospital for EKG's, blood-enzyme work and X-rays. This was the first medical attention of any kind I had received since I retired from the Navy. Stuck at the hospital, but having with me both my cellphone and Jan's, I made many calls, mostly to Jan's family members. My cousin Wayne afterwards drove me home from the hospital--as I struggled with realizing that I would have to stop calling it "our" house. Then I was mobbed by sympathetic neighbors for a time, before I could commence my first session of talking to Jan in Heaven while seated in a lawn chair. As with Mary, I make no stupid attempts to conjure a REPLY by self-delusion. And yet..you never know.

Twice during my writing of this, I have felt certain I could hear Jan's voice calling me, as so often she would call me away from the computer when she needed something. So each of those times, though I didn't think it was actually Jan speaking, I went up to the bedroom and spoke to Jan for awhile. The days to come will be chaotic; but I will speak to Jan again.

I often used to fear that Jan, in her vulnerability, might end up dying a long and miserable death in some disaster. But she has been spared from that; her departure was quick and sudden. I wish that she were still here. But I remember how she used to say she wished she were normal; and now, she's BETTER than normal. I also wish I had a recording of her singing in her sweetly childlike voice; but when I see her in Heaven, I'll ask her to sing in that voice for me before she goes back to her angelic voice.