‘My beautiful wife left us way too soon’
Ionce met a man who missed his wife so much that for more than a year after her death, he couldn’t take down the Christmas tree she loved. When a butterfly fluttered into his house one winter day, he imagined it was a visit or sign from her, so he caught the creature and drove it to a supermarket floral department to live happily. I’m starting to understand how he felt. Denice Stingl, my wife the past 34 years and mother of our three grown children, died of breast cancer on Jan. 25. She was 58 and wished to live twice that long.
Our Christmas tree was long down when she passed — our living room had become a hospice bedroom — and I can’t claim any otherworldly contact from her, though I wouldn’t mind some.
But what I’m connecting with is that man’s tender longing for his wife and his wish to hold on to her essence. Many of you readers have lost a spouse and know how deeply it hurts.
You may have encountered Denice in my column over the years, including the story of how she gave CPR to a stranger who dropped to the floor at our Sentry store, how she got rear-ended in our brand-new minivan with only 182 miles on it, how we took a week off and decluttered our entire house and garage, and how she kept moving the kitchen clock ahead until it was 20 minutes fast in an attempt to make our family more
punctual.
In June 2001 a column began: “My wife has breast cancer. We just found out on Monday.” A lump was removed then, some chemotherapy and radiation followed, and Denice was sent on her way. Five years passed. Ten years passed. I believed we were in the clear. Denice never felt sure of that.
In the summer of 2012 she developed mysterious pains in her hips and back. Her mammograms had all been fine, but we were heartbroken to learn the same cancer was back, though not in her breasts.
It had migrated, or metastasized as they say, to her liver — I still remember the word the doctor used, innumerable, to describe the buckshot tumors there — and to her bones, which would ache the rest of her life. Eventually it also found its way into her lungs, another organ commonly affected when breast cancer spreads.
With me at her side trying to keep up with her urgency for life, Denice took her chemo pills and just kept on going the best she could.
In 2014 she danced like crazy at our daughter Laura’s wedding, which the two of them had planned and planned. Early last year, she and I took a dream vacation to Hawaii, and in fall she ran our daughter Carly’s baby shower and sewed beanbags in the shape of googly-eyed sperm for the toss game we played.
Our first grandchild, Nicolas, was born Dec. 21, the very day Denice’s liver finally failed. Toxins in her blood clouded her brain, and in the few weeks that followed took her strength and then her life.
Our son, Jesse, joined me and the girls as we stood before 400 people at Denice’s memorial service to talk about this woman we loved. The pastor said Denice had asked for a kick-ass service, a word you don’t often hear in church. And she got it.
Denice worked many years as a respiratory therapist and later in organizational development at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. She and I met by chance at UWM when her guitar class and my banjo class were combined to play together. That was the luckiest day of my life.
My kids described a mother anyone would be lucky to have — sweet, upbeat, engaged in their lives and cheering their successes. Her passion was contagious. She encouraged reading and learning and becoming your own strong person. And if a child slammed a bedroom door in anger one too many times, she just might take it off the hinges for a while.
Denice was easy to know and easy to love. She loved boating and bargains and her book clubs. She learned pottery and knitting and the dulcimer. She was an amazing cook. She was a hugger. She made everything brighter. At the Komen walk in September, Denice rode her electric scooter and led a team in pink numbering 50 or more.
My beautiful wife left us way too soon.
It turns out she was right to worry about me. I’ve been a mess without her. Tearful. Shaky. Nauseous. Unable to sleep. Lost. I think about a quote I read from a woman who lost her husband to melanoma: She had plenty of people to do things with, but nobody to do nothing with.
At the memorial service, rather than focus on our loss and what Denice didn’t get to experience, I said I wanted to remember that she was the soul of a loving family, was around to see our kids grow up and marry, cradled one grandchild, traveled the world, and reached the pinnacle of her career.
“And I would suggest one last thing,” I told the gathering. “For the past three years, when we all knew we were going to lose Denice, she experienced an outpouring of love and appreciation from so many of you right up to the peaceful end. Not everyone gets that.
“We knew we just had to love her faster and with added urgency and tenderness. I can assure you that Denice died knowing without a doubt that she made a difference, that life is precious, and it’s the people we love who matter most.”