First published in 2020
I took this photograph during the last days of VST’s life. He was asleep, his hand resting over mine, and I quietly captured a moment he probably would never have allowed me to photograph had he been awake. At the time, I couldn’t have known how precious this simple image would become. Now I look at those two hands and see thirty-two years of marriage—work, arguments, laughter, illness, tenderness, and thousands upon thousands of ordinary touches that I once believed would always be there…..
Hands connect us to one another in a unique and precious way. In VST’s last days, he chose to spend time on “the death couch,” as he called it. He first recoiled at the thought of opening the hide-a-bed in the living room, but later he often chose to rest next to me in the busy part of the house. He slept while I snapped this, or he would have protested that any part of our nightmare called cancer was documented in this way. Images have a way of returning us to captured moments. We were captured by the hell that is cancer.
My own hands are large, functional Germanic woman-hands. The kind that get things done. Size ten ring finger. Not a dainty, girly-girl digit in the bunch. They tried to help me play the piano when I was little, but they constantly steered me in directions not conducive to a beautiful melody. My mom was crushed. They also attempted to help me with guitar. They easily wrapped around the neck, depressing strings to make keys that hummed in a 1970’s kind of Glen Campbell way for a time.
Through the years, they held young lovers, wrote term papers, dialed phone numbers, and twirled the cord late into the night. They pointed and shook at the boys who needed to leave me alone, and beckoned to those I wished didn’t. They raised Guide Dogs for the Blind, delivered brand new puppies into the world, trained dogs, and held their paws as they took their last breath. They irrigated grapes and helped shake them after they turned into raisins. They washed a squirmy grandson and splashed with him until we were showered with delightful fun in the bathroom. These days, they hold Oliver in the silent mornings when I wish VST was still here to share our morning coffee. They wipe my own tears and help me move on through this blog.
In the beginning of VST/Me, our hands were busy with life. Every aspect. Work, personal, spiritual, family, and educational growth. Through the years, VST used his massive mitts in the gentlest of ways. Holding a daughter’s precious hand at the country fair, leaving an imprint on her heart that warms her still today. His hands wielded wrenches and twins, a boy and a girl, when he was 21. They held steering wheels, traveling millions of miles in his lifetime. They built houses, waterfalls, great walls, and our life together. They wrote his dissertation and earned him the loving title Doctor H. Later in life, they caused him intense and extreme pain with arthritis and paralysis.
When we were together, our hands were often intertwined. After decades of marriage, often on a trip to Lowe’s, I would be in my own writer’s head. And there he would be, on a cold parking-lot morning at Lowe’s, grabbing mine. People would smile at us in that way. How adorable, these two sage lovers. And that is what we were, even if we had just argued the whole way there over an insignificant topic that had put us at odds. I would feel his hand reach for mine, and I was home, wherever we found ourselves.
Hands held each other when he had no more strength to reach for me in the night. My hands helped him take morphine and other hideous drugs, less horrible than the cancer that robbed him from me. They wiped his brow when he was feverish. They helped him into the passenger side of the Jeep to travel to the doctor, when it was me who took the wheel while he slept. They put soft blankets around him when he suddenly found himself bone-chillingly cold. And more than a few times, they shook at the heavens, questioning WHY.
Finally, in one last touch, it was my hand stroking his cheek that said Goodbye to him as he was making his final exit on that beautiful Virginia City morning. My hands cradled his urn and wondered how this all transpired in nine weeks.
Hands need to find each other and hold on. Touch is a precious sense that can speak louder than words at times. Caresses feed starved skin and comfort a bruised soul. Use your hands to produce acts of kindness. Wave. Open a door. Greet someone you haven’t seen for awhile in spite of Covid, or because of it. Clap for others. Journal your life. Connect with each other. Hold hands as you cross the street, and be so grateful that you have another’s hand, if only for a time.
Widow: A Journey Toward Life grew from moments like this—the goodbye, the unbearable days that followed, and the long journey toward discovering that letting someone go is not the same thing as leaving their love behind. The book will be released November 11, 2026.