Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

• Genesis 2:24

My wife and I were married for 48 years and almost one month. This photo, in poster size, won several competitions for the photographer, but after they were finished displaying it, the photographer wanted highway robbery prices for the poster.

She passed away last night, technically early this morning.

She had open-heart surgery almost five years ago.  The bovine valve was “guaranteed” to last roughly ten years.  They at least said the ten years was the average.  You might get more.

No one said anything about the chemicals that are injected by kidney dialysis, to collect the poisons and make them easier to filter out of the blood…  No one ever said that those chemicals love human tissue, but they do not do well with bovine tissue.  So, with nearly three years on kidney dialysis, the bovine tissue started “narrowing.”  As the doctor from the heart catheterization lab explained, the valve simply did not open enough for the system to maintain pressure outside the heart.

The nurse noticed a low pulse.  The doctor scheduled emergency surgery to install a pacemaker, but as they were prepping, her heart would stop.  They had one doctor trying to keep her heart going while the other doctor tried to install the pacemaker, but it became harder and harder to keep the heart going.

But she went from feeling better than she had felt in three months (shingles, pneumonia, and a GI bleed) to being unable to maintain blood flow through the body in less than a week.

She said that if she passed, I would have more time to write.  Even in dying, she was thinking of others, but I replied that she was my muse.  So much of my writing had her in the story.  I try to make Jesus the focus, but I think I will have a few posts about her in the coming weeks.

After all a man leaves his parents and is married to his wife and they become one flesh.  And right now, a mere six hours after she passed, I feel that half of me is gone.

And if you wonder why I am writing so soon?  It is the best way, until family shows up, to deal with the issue.  I find writing therapeutic.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.