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Today the Times begins a story about Linda Howe,
a 51-year-old woman coping with her first year of widowhood. It is an intensely personal account of an ordinary person's life and loss. Though Linda's experiences are unique,
Overcome with exhaustion and grief, Linda Howe gently touches her husband, Milton, as he lies dying in their New Port Richey home.
DAY ONEWant to go see the sun set?" mLinda Howe put Milt's uneaten steak in the refrigerator. She tossed Bear's leash onto the floorboard and harnessed the dog in the back seat of their Ford Escort. They drove to Anclote River Park, 10 miles from their home in New Port Richey. It was a small, plain park, almost empty. Bear, a dust mop of a dog, strutted around the pavement. Linda and Milt sat in the car, across the canal from the Florida Power plant, and watched mounds of turbine froth drift to the gulf. The sun sank. "There's something wrong," Milt said. "I'm seeing a bunch of suns. My eyes are all messed up." Linda's heart dropped. "Don't you remember what Dr. Ruckdeschel said?" she asked. "Oh, yeah." he said, "Vision problems, then coma and death." Linda reached for his hand.
* * *Days later, on Aug. 7, 1995, Milton Howe couldn't get out of their waterbed. Linda loaded him with painkillers, then yanked him to his feet. He had an appointment at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. She rolled him through Dr. John Ruckdeschel's waiting room, hello-ing staff members, chatting with them in passing. Linda, a gregarious, jovial woman, ended her sentences with a little laugh. Nurse Mary Heise boosted Milt onto the examining table. Linda plopped into Milt's wheelchair. "I get the comfortable seat," she joked. Ruckdeschel stepped in: "How's it going?" Milt reeled off his litany of decline. "My left eye, trying to look at people? I see anywhere from four to six of them. The pain, I can't take. It's in my knees. A little bit in my ankles and through my hips." "Both sides?" Ruckdeschel asked. "Both sides at the same time. It'll knock me right down!" We're between a rock and a hard place, Ruckdeschel (RUK-da-shell) told them. The brain masses are swelling and causing the visual problems. Prednisone might help, but Milt bloats up when he takes it. Milt, meek, said: "We can try it again." Ruckdeschel prescribed Prednisone for the vision problems, morphine for pain, laxatives for morphine constipation. "You need to get a hospital bed," he told Milt. "The hardest thing in the world to get out of is a waterbed." Ruckdeschel's grab bag of nostrums startled Linda. "I kiss him good night and wonder, 'Are we that close?' " she asked. "Could be," Ruckdeschel responded. Milt didn't flinch. It's been four years since the cancer surgery, he said. "The doctors gave me three to five years. Looks like I'll cruise through the five-year mark." Ruckdeschel looked straight at him. "No. I don't think we'll make five."
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