It’s been a month. I don’t want to write it because I don’t want it to be true. But the fact time marches on, with or without you is just as true as it is harsh.

I started writing a post the morning of February 8th and haven’t been sure what to do with it. I’ll share it now with some new thoughts following.

This is ending in absolute Keith style. He isn’t calling it. He isn’t relenting. He isn’t quitting. He’s gonna go till he fails. I’ve struggled around this earlier in the week, seeing that death can come slowly to one who is strong. What an injustice. But last night I started thinking about all the time I’ve spent with Keith climbing. How many times I had to sit in the cold damn woods waiting for him. How when I’d had enough, I’d drop off, step off, jump off. This harkens back to when we climbed in the Gunks in New Paltz, NY, a weekend destination of Keith’s for years and the beginning of my short-lived climbing career. If you want someone to carry your climbing stuff around all day, don’t ask me, I’ve done that enough. Keith would push it until it looked like the boulder was flinging him off. I’ve seen Keith give a move his all over way sketchy landings. He has an unfinished project in Great Barrington, MA that was the worse. I can’t remember the name, but the landing was built up with, ya know, sticks and logs on a hillside. And a Sarah standing there, for moral support? I have a picture that I took and developed with actual film in my community college photography class, of Keith at the top of the problem New Pair of Glasses. Totally depending on my memory here, but pretty sure you could break a bone falling off it. I am a worst case scenario kind of gal… start there and move forward. So more than once, or many times if I’m honest, I’d watch Keith considering all the ways he would get hurt. Yet there he is, throwing for the top, pushing past any discomfort, fatigue, wife’s voice, till he gets it or he completely runs out… of daily light, energy, or time.

The serene writing moment I was having was interrupted by the palliative care team and a conversation that would forever change my life. They no longer deemed the high flow oxygen medically beneficial and it was their recommendation to titrate Keith off.

It was hard for Keith to talk about end of life wishes and preparations. He had shared that he felt comfortable allowing doctors to make decisions on when to continue or stop interventions.  So as horrible as this was, I knew that Keith had wanted to pursue all that he could for as long as he could at the hospital and we had run the course. The subsequent few hours felt (and still feel) like some tortuous dream. Like moving through quicksand, at the speed of light, towards a cliff, in the dark… it felt like internal chaos. 

The thought of Keith’s actual passing had preyed on my fears for some time. It felt like more the I could bear. But in that space, God gave me a constant flow of things to say to Keith as we walked towards Jesus together. I can’t tell you what I said, but the Spirit was filling my absolute depletion. Keith’s labored breathing was the most difficult thing I've ever had to watch, but then I thought, this is Keith. With me by his side, his parents and my parents around his bed, he gave it his all. Keith pushed it until the very end. He didn’t back down in life, nor did he in death.

I share these details to honor the story that we’ve told for over a year now. We invited you in at the beginning and now I offer the best closure that I can. Not that loss is ever really over though. Grief is tricky and murky business. Mostly I feel a sense of shock and deep pain when considering the events of the last 14 months. I knew Keith over half my life and I’ve known this one month without him. Now I’m making myself cry.

The kids and I will be staying in Colorado for the time being; finishing up house projects (well others finishing up house projects really, I’d have kept the blue metal kitchen cabinets if it was up me, renovations are so much work), enjoying the sunshine and the community that has relentlessly rallied around us.

I don’t know what comes next. Actually… I do. Stella will wake up in the morning and ask to watch The Octonauts. She’ll snuggle and later scream when I say she can’t have candy. Moses will wake up smiling, ready to eat solid foods with gusto and make crazy noises at the world.
There we will be. Doing what we do.  

I’ve shared a lot of Bible verses here, but a line from New Girl feels like more fitting end. 

“Without ash to rise from, the phoenix would just be a bird getting up.”

- Sarah