Jimmie and Linda

By Eileen Love
It was the kind of phone call you know is coming, yet it still takes you by surprise. Jimmie was dead. The voice on the line belonged to one of the women in my ENDOW group, and she was calling all of us to share the news that Linda’s husband finally ended his battle with cancer.

I first met Linda at an ENDOW gathering a couple of years ago. It was an informational meeting. There were one hundred women in the room that day and all were captivated by the description of John Paul II’s teaching on the genius of women. Some of us banded together and that day was the beginning of our own little ENDOW group.

With the love of our faith as the common bond, we all quickly became friends. We learned about each other’s families, dissected our struggles and discussed successes. Always throughout, we prayed for one another.

Linda, the extrovert, and Jimmie, the quiet one, were married for forty years and were entirely devoted to each other. When Linda shared with us how sick her husband was, I was struck by the language she used. When she spoke of the doctoring and the hospital visits, she always used the plural, as in…“We’ve never had cancer before…” and “We told the doctor we didn’t feel good…” In our group, Linda often prefaced her comments with self deprecating disclaimers like, “I don’t know much but …” and then a priceless gem would drop from her lips. She had the faith in her heart and loved stretching intellectually. And she had the theology of Christian marriage down pat. She knew, better than anyone that the task of Christian spouses is to help each other along in the path of holiness.

This she did all during Jimmie’s long illness. When our group did our latest study on Salvifici Doloris (The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering) Linda could not always be with us because of the demands of caretaking her husband, but when she could steal away, she would come to our meeting, one of us would fetch her coffee, and we would read John Paul II’s message on the redemptive power of suffering. We all took in the words and pondered their meaning, but it was Linda, with her quiet courage and untiring love, who made the message come alive.

At the funeral Linda looked beautiful. She was dressed in a pretty green top and wore a faint smile much of the day. Serene during the Mass and stoic during the ceremony at Fort Logan, we, her friends, knew she was taking comfort in the knowledge that her beloved Jimmie was now beginning his eternal life. If you have a quiet moment this week, please say a prayer for the repose of this good man’s soul. It would mean everything to Linda.