Marriage Moats-Almost Died in the Parking Lot

Published: Thu, 10/04/12

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

My cousin was driving with his family through Indiana last summer. He was feeling sluggish, and did not know why. They stopped for something to eat and he realized he could barely make it to the restaurant. His daughter was concerned.

Her dad looked ashen. She drove to an emergency room and begged him to go in. He was reluctant.

"It's nothing. I am just tired." His wife and kids were not duped. This was serious. Eventually they coerced him across the parking lot, which seemed incredibly vast to him as he tried to cross it. He had to stop to rest halfway.

When he got inside the door, the ER nurse assessed him quickly. She suspected that he had a pulmonary embolism, and rushed him to a cubicle. In a matter of hours he was seen by a slew of doctors who knew he was too sick for their small hospital. But the clot was precariously saddling both lungs, and the transport to a regional facility could dislodge it.

"Mrs. Rose, your husband is in a life threatening condition." Looking back she did not comprehend how close her husband of thirty years was to death. She and their kids stayed up all night with him, watching the changing shifts of technicians and nurses. When word got back to their hometown a string of people started praying.

In the morning he seemed stable enough to withstand an ambulance ride to Indianapolis, where he would be operated on to implant a tiny filter for his blood and given a blast of clot busting drugs. The thrombus was big enough to kill him if it traveled to his pulmonary artery.

For the next few weeks their family was stranded in a hospital where complete strangers used their consummate skill to save this man's life. He is stronger now, and grateful. When he walked through his front door the room was filled floor to ceiling with red balloons, which he ceremoniously popped like a clump of blood cells. The prayers of friends were answered.

While it is hard to say with certainty, the likelihood is that if his daughter had not driven to the ER, if they had not insisted he admit himself, and if the nurse had not recognized his condition immediately, he would have died. That is a delicate series of events to line up, but they did. A year later he is working out at the gym three times a week. And laughing. The memory is enough to make them feel loved.

A few years ago John and I flew to California for the weekend. As chance would have it, our old marriage group had a reunion while we were there. We met at a friend's house.

One of the marriages was in crisis. Her tolerance for the relationship was about to burst. John and I assessed the gravity of the situation and asked them to try a communication tool called The Five Yeses.

Because of our history with them, they complied, but had scant hope that the marriage would make it through the night. In a simple process of questions, she filtered out her misconceptions about what he was thinking, making room for the flow of genuine listening. Her head had been stuffed with judgments, but in the presence of a group who loved their marriage she felt her heart reopen to him. Our prayers helped too.

If we had not planned a trip to California that week, if there had not been an effort to get the group together again, if we had not used that tool, she told me later that their marriage would have died. That was a precarious sequence of circumstances to fall in place. But it did.

Years later they are hiking the hills around their home. And laughing. The memory is enough to make them feel loved.

Photo by Joy Feerrar

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