Cathy Day lost her fight with ovarian cancer on 10/15/2020. She was 56 years old.
Catherine Day was born in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of
Richard Day and Diane More, and attended Vernon High School. After graduating
in 1983, she attended the University of Texas, where she received a master’s
degree in Speech Language Pathology. She taught in various public and private
schools in California, Maryland, and Texas, helping learning-disabled children
to read and speak, for two decades.
Cathy met Mark in the Summer of 2000 and they were married
in October, 2003. They later moved to Vernon as co-owners of the Vernon Plaza
Theater where they lived and worked. Cathy was a member of First Presbyterian
Church of Vernon and was active in the community as a founding member of
Leadership Vernon, The Vernon Main Street Program, and the Vernon Farmer’s
Market. She always had a smile and a laugh for everyone she met, and the memory
of her kindness, her gentle nature and her warmth will be a comfort to her
mother Diane; her step-father Pat More; her sisters: Susan, Barbara, and Erin;
her brother Mike; her many nieces and nephews, and her husband, who survive her,
but will never forget her.
Let's be clear about one thing. This wasn't a "battle" with cancer. It was a mugging. It was a street fight. It snuck up on us and took a shot when we weren't looking. It hit below the belt. It sucker-punched. It kicked us when we were down. And in the end, when it looked like we were getting the upper hand, it cheated. It cut off her food supply so she would starve to death. It couldn't take her out the old fashioned way, so it starved her, like what the Germans did to the city of Leningrad in World War II. It wasn't a battle. It was a protracted siege.
Cathy had been getting worse, degree by inexorable degree. Every day brought minute changes, thump, thump, thump, like a bowling ball rolling slowly down stairs. First she lost her leg strength. Then her arms. Then her face and mouth. It became harder for her to speak. She was tired, unable to really ever get her strength back. And the cancer, free of treatment, just went to town and ran rampant.
The irony of it all was too painful. What it did to her was horrific. She had taken care of herself her whole life, and what the cancer did was strip her of the things she most loved. She couldn't eat. She had difficulty speaking. Hospice care is all about helping people to die with dignity. And this is nothing against Hospice of Wichita Falls, either. They were outstanding and the staff all came to love Cathy. She got great attention and loving, gentle care for the duration.
But they didn't know Cathy, the woman who lived for fajitas and margaritas. Cathy, who liked my mother's banana pudding more than anyone in the world. Cathy, who loved my cooking and ate heartily and well, whenever possible. With the N-G tube in her nose, what liquid she could drink that didn't get digested was suctioned back out so it wouldn't make her throw up.
Cathy, who taught disabled kids how to speak, to read, to write, and was great at it, for twenty years. Who acted pretty much her whole life, using her voice to make people feel and believe. She was so weak, she couldn't make a complete sentence without having to stop in the middle to catch her breath. And she couldn't move her mouth and articulate without great physical effort. Robbed of her ability to really express herself.
Worst of all, cancer took her smile.
She tried her hardest, but the muscles were just not capable. She smiled with her eyes, though, and you could see when she recognized you. For a while.
This week was especially difficult. I'd finally figured out the only way to pull this off was for me to drive to Wichita Falls in the evening, spend the night with her, and drive back in the morning and try to get as much done as I could before it was time to drive back. It was terrible, but it was the least terrible option available to me.
Ordinarily I'd be using that time to cry, yell, and scream. But the death of Eddie Van Halen last week spawned a tribute channel on Sirius and I have to tell you, it may have saved my life. You can't be sad when Van Halen is playing. You just can't. It's biologically impossible. And all of the celebrity guests they had who picked their favorite Van Halen songs had about 85% the same songs on all their lists--and they were my favorites, too. As unlikely as it seemed, and as incongruent as it sounds, I was able to get there and back on a more even keel, thanks to David Lee Roth's howls and shrieks.
In truth, it helped to keep me from dwelling on what cancer had done to my beautiful wife; how it altered her body, painfully distorting her and warping her. She was in great pain. It hurt to move her. It hurt to not move her. She endured it, until it was too much, and then she'd cry out. At the end of it, they had doubled her morphine, and she was still needing more.
Last night was brutal. Prior to Wednesday, Cathy had rallied on Monday and Tuesday, asking to speak to different people. She wanted to see folks one last time, I think. Her breathing was labored, and she had trouble with it. I can't believe she held on this long. She just didn't want to go. I think she would have stayed here, in excruciating pain, if we had asked her to.
But we didn't. We all told her she could leave when she was ready. No one wanted to see her suffer. One of the last things she said to me before she had trouble talking was, "I don't want to wake up." That was last week.
The staff at the Hospice center really got to know all of us, and they were so gentle and kind to Cathy, who was their favorite, even though they are not supposed to have them. Even sick, and in pain, she was still Cathy. She smiled, she asked after them, and was her engaging, considerate self through all of this. During their shift change, at 7 PM, they all gathered in the room, twelve of them, I think. They joined hands, encircled Cathy's bed, and sang "Amazing Grace" in sweet and earnest voices. Afterward, they kissed her face and told her they loved her. It was the most wonderful thing, and a memory I will treasure.
There were seven of us family members in the room when she passed. When her breathing slowed down, they called me over to her. I held her hand and called out to her. Prior to that, they had been playing Bruce Springsteen. Her breath, stopping and starting for hours, suddenly stopped...and she shortly exhaled, and I felt something let go. I called for the nurse. Bruce was singing in a live concert, and he'd just started "Born to Run," I swear to God. I sang it to her as Roger, the nurse, listened for a heartbeat. There was none. She was gone.
My sweet wife was finally free of all this horrible shit and misery, none of which she deserved. We were supposed to die at the age of ninety, in our sleep, peacefully. Not gasping for breath, unable to hold her head up, robbed of her speech and her body, her strength trickling out of her through a number of humiliating tubes. The last two years took such a toll on us. But Cathy endured it all. She grinned, and she bore it. She had doubts, and many fears. There were freak out sessions, and lots of crying. But then we put on the grown-up pants and shouldered on, lifted up and sometimes carried along by the well-wishes, support, and loving prayers of so many.
I'm glad this is over. It was too much, at times, to bear, and we both had our setbacks. But Cathy understood me, and what I needed, and she made our life together during all of this as "normal" as possible. She would make me a cup of coffee in the morning with the French press (she would have herbal tea). We cooked for each other. We did some social events, when she was feeling strong enough. We even made a couple of road trips. As much as we could do that was still "us," we did it. And we said everything we needed to say to each other.
So I have no regrets. I've got a lot of everything else, including unfathomable rage, deep crushing emptiness, unquenchable resentment for a disease that still has no medical answer for it, and twenty years of fun and laughter to sift through into a bunch of "greatest hits" montages for my mental Man-Cave. But I have no regrets, and so far as we were concerned, neither did she.
Rest in peace, Cathy. Thank you for everything.
