By Jim Caverly
In July of 1978 I moved into an apartment in Greenbelt, Maryland. I was carrying some boxes of books and the sweat rolled down my face. My glasses were slipping down my nose. A young woman walking down the hall said a polite “hello” and kept on walking. Later she told me I looked like a bookish nerd. Neither one of us took much notice of the other.
As the year moved on, we occasionally talked with each other. She complained to me about how she was disappointed in the men she was dating. Only gradually did we find we had many things in common, including a love of literature and music. We attended a few concerts together and I drove her to the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., to pick out a mantel for the fireplace of the house she was having built on the Eastern Shore of Maryland across the Chesapeake Bay from Washington and Baltimore. That turned out to be the house we have lived in for the past 41 years.
When I first got to know Phoebe, she was driving to some of the richest suburbs of Washington on Saturday mornings to tutor children of wealthy residents. I thought she was overworking, but for her it was not just extra income but a true labor of love. Many years later, she remembered those children fondly. She was always enthusiastic about helping children overcome their disabilities.
Over a period of three or four years we became more involved in each other’s lives and decided to marry. We moved into the house she had had built and began our lives together. It took some adjusting, since we were both around forty years old. We were used to living alone and doing things our own way. I remember one time when Phoebe wanted to sell a table lamp that I had bought during my bachelor days. I objected to giving it up and that led to a big argument. It was a foolish thing to get upset about, but we were both adapting to our new life together.
Phoebe was always dissatisfied with photos of herself. For our wedding in 1984, Cecil and Sandy acted as photographers. Phoebe loved most of the pictures they took. But one day years later she was reviewing them and found one she didn’t like – something about the way she looked in that particular picture. So, she cut it in half and threw away the part that showed her, keeping the part with me in it. I said, “What good is a wedding photo with the groom, but no bride?” Phoebe simply said, “I like the way you look, but not the way I do.” She could be a very determined person.
As a childless couple, we came to depend more and more on each other. Phoebe continued to tutor students, and for a few years she had a job she loved as a reading teacher at a parochial school. But illness struck, and she was forced to retire early. She found a new purpose in life as she produced a small Christian news commentary program on the internet. I helped her with it, although I was still working full-time, so my contribution was limited. She continued to work on the radio show almost to the end.
I retired from the public schools, then went back to teaching at a small Christian school. Finally, with the onset of COVID, I retired for good. Now I had plenty of time to devote to her radio show. We worked together on it and wrote a number of essays. One day Phoebe proposed that we collect the essays into a book. We did just that and it was printed in the summer of 2023. She was very proud of our work and ended up giving the book out free to any radio listener who wanted it.
As the years continued to pass, we were blessed with good health and energy. Phoebe did not look, act or speak like a woman in her eighties. It was easy to think she would go on with her usual energy and enthusiasm for years to come. But she fell in September and could not make it up or down the steps. So, she was confined to the second floor of our house. I brought her meals to her and she continued to work on the radio show.
Then in late January she fell again. She became so weak that she had to be hospitalized. We discovered that she was more seriously ill than either of us realized. Yet I still thought she would bounce back as she had several times before from serious illnesses. This time was different. On Sunday, February 16th, the nurses asked her to roll onto her side so they could change her bed linens. Suddenly, she exclaimed, “I can’t breathe,” and in a matter of seconds she was gone.
I had stayed the night with her, not because there was any crisis, but because she wanted me to be with her. I was standing next to her bed when she passed away, and I know she got the best of care. Her passing was a tremendous shock, but had she lived, she would almost certainly have faced some very hard choices and invasive treatments. She always had great anxiety about being in a hospital, so I’m grateful that God spared her what would almost certainly have been a series of frightening and painful ordeals.
Phoebe in the last few years would sometimes say, “Don’t leave me!” She meant, “Don’t die and leave me alone.” Of course, that was out of my control, and it worried me every time she said it. I tried to reassure her that I would do all that I could to stay with her. I often prayed that I would always be able to care for her. That prayer has been answered.
I miss Phoebe tremendously, but we were both people of strong Christian faith. One verse from the Bible is especially comforting. The context is different, for Jesus was speaking to his disciples on the night before his death. But I think it speaks to us today as well. From the Gospel of John, Chapter 16, verse 22, in the King James Version that Phoebe loved, it reads:
“Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”
So I look forward to that day when Phoebe and I will be reunited.
