Living the Travel Channel

In her last days, Karla told me something very sweet. She said that I made her brave. She said that she could be brave during the day at work, because she had me to come home to in the evening. That was quite kind of her, but I don’t feel that I can take credit for her bravery. She exhibited bravery long before I entered her life.

By the time I met her, Karla had left the small town in Oregon that she grew up in to go to college, ending up at Columbia Christian College in Portland, OR, where we eventually met. At CCC she elected to major in Biblical Studies. At that time the Biblical Studies program was primarily meant to prepare young men to preach the Gospel and to enter the ministry. There were no female preachers allowed to preach or be ministers in our denomination back then. So if a woman entered the Biblical Studies program, it was assumed that she was intending to become a preacher’s wife. It was joked that she was pursuing an “MRS” degree. But Karla chose Biblical Studies just because she was interested in studying the Bible deeply. So she abhorred being asked why she was in the Biblical Studies program, because of the assumption. But she continued, despite the annoyance, despite the befuddlement of others.

In fact, in one case, there was a visiting preacher in one of her classes. Before he started his lesson, he looked directly at Karla, and said, “What are you doing here?”. But the harassment did not deter her. Rather, she excelled in the program. When I came to CCC, and got to know some of her classmates, it was clear that Karla impressed them. One said, “Oh, Karla’s really sharp. She’s an ace at New Testament Greek!” Some of the Classmates even sought her advice when working on their N.T. Greek homework. When, years later, I brought up their awe at her ability she said, “Yeah, Greek was interesting, but I liked Old Testament Hebrew much more.” Despite her prowess, Greek wasn’t even her ‘thing’.

Karla’s bravery continued after college. For a  time she returned home to help take care of her father when he contracted cancer. She pursued and earned a Master’s Degree in Library Science. And she continued living life in her own way. This eventually helped us get reacquainted, and then married. We reconnected in mid 2000, and at first were just trading emails for a few months. But later in the year, a close relative passed away, so my entire family went up for the funeral in Idaho, my brothers riding along with me in my car. On the way back, I decided to visit Karla in Portland, OR. Only one of my brothers cared to join me on this side trip, but we had a very nice time with Karla, sharing a few meals, as well as other fun activities. We went to see the X-men movie that was in theaters at the time, because we both enjoyed it very much, to the point that we each had seen it several times, and had bonded over it in our emails. On the evening that we left, we had dinner and a pleasant conversation with Karla. She said she was thinking at the time that this was a nice bookend to our relationship. Until I ruined everything when I said these words, “I’d like to see more of you.” Instead of putting a cap on our relationship, this accelerated it. This caused her to think, “Well, maybe…” and she started considering me seriously as a partner. And then she took action

She declared to herself that 2001 would be “The Year of Bravery”. She would take on things that scared her. One was to take belly dancing lessons. Another was to pursue me. In that cause she came down to California to visit me and meet my family. She hit it off very well with my parents, and my brothers. A fact that brought much happiness to our relationship, then and for decades to come. During her visits she even went on job interviews in the interest of moving down to California to be with me. But at that time the Dot Com bubble burst. I was even laid off from two different tech jobs within two weeks. But unlike many people in the tech industry, including my much more qualified brother, I had some job leads. But, fortuitously, all of these job leads ended up being in Portland. So instead of her moving to California, I moved to Oregon. Once I arrived, we were married in just a few days. Very, very brave of her.

So while I will take credit for encouraging her, I will certainly not take credit for her bravery. That fully belonged to her. She learned to live life with bravery, and that contributed enormously to our life together.

It feels a bit awkward and grim to bring this up, but it must be said. Karla’s bravery did not abandon her when the spectre of cancer and mortality presented itself. She faced the many tests and treatments with her hallmark courage, determination, and humor.  And here I  might be willing to accept a tiny bit of credit in supporting her, since  during the final years I helped her get to a multitude of doctor appointments, and camped out in many hospital rooms with her for days and even weeks. But the real truth is that she made it easy to be her caretaker, enduring the trying situations with patience, grace, and thankfulness. 

Karla remained so until the very end. In spite of the awfulness of the situation and being bedridden, our last weeks together were some of the sweetest we ever had. She left me feeling grateful that I’d been given the privilege of being her primary caregiver during that time. Grateful that she had come into and changed my life so beautifully, despite our time together being much shorter than we wished.

Being a part of her life was and is inspiring. As Karla’s best friend Lonnie has said, “She took the lemons in life and made her own kind of lemonade.” Indeed.

The face of bravery.