A wife’s love for her dying husband

An editor at the Washington Post explains how caring has made her a better person

Michael Cook | Sep 30 2016 | comment

Tracy Grant is a deputy managing editor at The Washington Post. Last year her husband Bill was diagnosed with brain cancer and went downhill very quickly. But she says in this video that the experience drew the best out of her and made her a better person. Her article, on which this video is based, was headlined, “I was my husband’s caregiver as he was dying of cancer. It was the best seven months of my life.”

In this incredibly moving and sincere testimonial from a hard-edged journalist, there seem to be four messages.

First, her husband’s decline from health to helplessness helped her to discover the meaning of her life: “I had become a respected professional, a responsible and, I hope, loved parent, but I had yet to discover the reason I was put on this earth. During those seven months, I came to understand that whatever else I did in my life, nothing would matter more than this. Even though I really didn’t know how this would end.”

Second, she discovered beauty: “I found I could train myself to see more beauty than bother, to set my internal barometer to be more compassionate than callous. But I also discovered that with each day, my heart and soul grew more open to seeing this beauty than at any other time in my life.”

Third, she discovered, or rediscovered, gratitude: “Several months ago, during a town hall, Hillary Clinton was asked about her faith. She spoke about daily meditations that her faith adviser offers her and said that one has become a touchstone for her. “Practice the discipline of gratitude,” she said. I had never thought about the lessons of Bill’s illness in quite that way but as soon as I heard it, I realized that that’s just what I had been doing those months: I had been training myself to be grateful. It’s a very Hillary Clinton-type thought, discipline and gratitude sharing the same sentence. But it was also my mantra, one I’d recommend to every caregiver.”

And fourth, she discovered, or rediscovered, faith: “When I couldn’t sleep during those nights, I took to praying the rosary and then began praying it daily even if I had no difficulty sleeping. There is a reason that prayer beads are common in so many religious traditions dating to well before Christ. For me the repetition of the Hail Mary while caressing pearlescent beads helped slow my breathing, calm my mind. I came to feel naked if I didn’t have beads in a pocket or a purse, within easy reach while scans were performed, IVs dripped, test results were waited for.

“Even during the moments when I was most angry with God, I found that I could talk to Mary on the theory that she knew a little bit about being challenged by God. Today, saying the rosary is part of my morning ritual, done while walking the dog and bearing witness to the moment when night relinquishes its purchase to a new day.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet

We have quite a feast of articles to end the week. A couple of highlights: In a very thoughtful article British ethicist David Jones looks back on the Paralympics and discusses an issue raised by Belgian medal-winner Marieke Vervoort with her support for euthanasia: does Belgium’s willingness to hasten death account, in part, for its rather muted support for Paralympians compared with Britain’s?

Also on end-of-life issues, Michael Cook highlights the beautiful testimony of a senior editor at The Washington Post on caring for her husband as he died of cancer: “It was the best seven months of my life,” says Tracy Grant. (Video and article link.)

Michael’s post earlier in the week on sabotage of a new Australian book by David van Gend on same-sex marriage has drawn so many fiery comments (259 at last count) that we have given the opponents of free speech another target: a review of Dr van Gend’s book by Campbell Markham.

And for something completely different, try Mathew Otieno’s piece about Kenya’s indie computer games, feeding a market that is as insatiable as anywhere in the world, it seems. For all the Western hand-wringing about Africa, it often sounds very much like one’s own neighbourhood.