Our world changed in August 2024.
A neighbor called to say, “Your wife is lying on the pavement.” When I got there, Bertha was on the ground surrounded by several neighbors. She was dazed and bleeding from the head. Someone had called 911, and the emergency people arrived in a couple of minutes.
Bertha spent five days at St. Dominic’s for a concussion. As a result, she lost all short-term memory.
Bertha had always been a beautiful and amazing woman. She had been Miss Forest Hill High School as a teen, and with degrees from Bob Jones University (one of her classmates was Dr. John MacArthur himself) and Rhode Island College, she became a teacher. Over the years she taught American literature in high schools and colleges wherever she and her family lived — Boston, Birmingham, Melbourne, Florida.
In churches where her husband pastored, she was the most effective greeter! She loved teaching Bible studies for women and was her husband’s biggest prayer warrior. At home, she crocheted afghans for everyone she knew. She loved to read, spent an hour with her Bible every morning (sitting on the carpet at the foot of our bed with her open Bible, a notebook, and her beloved doggie), and got a great kick out of cooking pastries for the neighbors.
After the accident
After her accident, all of that stopped. It stopped immediately.
We had to sell her car. We reluctantly told a few friends what we were dealing with, mostly out of necessity. Her Sunday School class — as lovely a group of senior ladies as you will ever meet — needed to know so they could pray for her.
Doctors began running tests to see exactly what had happened and to determine how to help her. They’re still at it.
As her husband, I had much to learn.
‘Not a medical person’
I’m a preacher and not a medical person.
I can do a Bible study on Romans tonight, but had to look up medical terms to see what the doctors were saying. Two years after her accident, they’re still running tests. The earlier tests — lumbar puncture and an open MRI — were inconclusive, they said. Last week the hospital did a brain PET scan. We will find out in a few days what it revealed.
I keep up with all her meds. The names on the bottles are foreign to me — metoprolol, alendronate, amlodipine, donepezil — I mean, whoever heard of those things? Even though I refill the prescriptions, keep the pill dispenser loaded, and see that she takes them morning and night, I still haven’t the slightest idea what most of them are.
I’m now in charge of meals. (Margaret, my wife of 52 years — in Heaven since January of 2015 — would laugh at that.) Cooking is something I never learned. On the Alabama farm where I grew up, I worked in the fields alongside Dad and my three brothers. Our two sisters, Patricia and Carolyn — one two years older than me, the other two years younger — learned the kitchen arts from Mom. I learned how to wash dishes.
My daughter-in-law in Mobile laughs about the time I called her a year ago and said, “Tell me how to pre-heat the oven.” That’s how clueless I was.
Now, you know I’m not going to be cooking from scratch the way my Mom did. But I can heat up chicken pot pies or meals purchased from the freezers of nearby restaurants. There are three pizza places within a mile of my house, and Bertha loves pizza (smiley-face goes here)! And friends bring dishes over occasionally, so we’re making it.
Bertha and I were married in January of 2017 in the chapel of First Baptist Church Jackson, where I had served on staff in the early 1970s. Bertha’s husband Gary Fagan and I were classmates in New Orleans Seminary in the 1960s. They pastored through the years and then served as missionaries to Brazil and Malawi. But I never knew Gary’s family and he did not know mine. Bertha and I met nearly two years after our spouses went to Heaven.
Helpful support
Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison has a caregivers support group that meets one Monday night a month. I’ve been to two sessions and found it most helpful.
I’m starting to read up on dementia and Alzheimer’s. There are a lot of books on the subject, apparently.
The other night I was talking to the Lord about the dilemma I’m facing. I get invited to preach a lot and as a sketch artist/cartoonist. I’m often asked to draw for events, and I love doing it. But obviously, I need to cut down on the outside travel. So, I was telling the Lord, “I want to do your work as much as I can, but You’ll have to show me how to do that and take care of Bertha.”
And He spoke back to me.
“Taking care of your wife is My work also.”
And so it is.
I’ve told Bertha’s children and grandchildren I feel honored to be trusted by the Lord with the care of this woman who has been a champion for Him through all these years. I pray to be found faithful.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Joe McKeever and originally published by the Baptist Record. McKeever is a member of First Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi.
