Planning for what comes after

Her voice is gentle, though it's nearing 9 p.m. and it's been a long day. She should sleep, but ... "But I just don't know how much time I have with him, so I spend as much time with him as I can," Lisa Lenox said, speaking quietly from the chair next to the hospital bed where her partner, Dave Leatherwood, is sleeping in their Elyria home. "You never know what's going to get thrown at you. This ..." she says, and takes a breath, "… was totally unexpected." Just a few days ago this was their office. Now it's where he gave in and asked hospice workers to finally bring in a hospital bed where he will spend his last days. A month ago Dave, 55, thought he pulled a muscle at work. He went to the emergency room to have it checked out and soon a nurse came and sat on his bed. That's when he knew. Nurses don't sit next to you to talk. It was cancer. It was throughout his liver and into his lungs, already at stage 4 and aggressively spreading. "Chemo won't help me, they pretty much told me that already," Dave said. "I've got to get as comfortable as I can and wait it out, basically." Cancer, when it comes calling, always does so with the worst timing. But in Dave's case it is particularly profound. The doctors told him he might have a couple weeks or a couple months. He's not afraid to die, he says, but it is going so quickly and he needs to prepare for Brian. Brian is Dave's son. Two years ago, Brian's mom died of colon cancer just after he turned 9. He's 11 now and about to lose his father too. Lisa lost her husband — also to cancer — shortly after Brian's mother died. They had been together 22 years. Dave, who first met Lisa 40 years ago in junior high, contacted her, no stranger to grief. "We've been together ever since," he said. "We've had an awful lot of fun together. The grieving process is different for everyone and her and I, we clung to each other. Brian, he developed a bond with this young lady. He treats her like she's his mom. Human beings are pretty awesome." They made plans to go camping this summer, bought a pool to set up in the yard and concert tickets for a show at the Palace in October. They talked about getting married. And yeah, they talked about what they'd do if something happened to either one of them, because — well, because the worst case had come true to both of them before. And then the pulled muscle. And the nurse sat on the bed. Lisa says her love, who was always a "ball of energy," now wants to sleep all the time. His color is not good. It's going quickly. We all talk about bucket lists, things we want to do before we leave this mortal coil. Dave must secure a new parent for his son. They started planning the night they discovered he was sick, Lisa said. They want Brian to stay here with Lisa after his dad goes. Family members agree it should be Lisa and Lisa's adult children and stepchildren agree as well, they said. "I love him. He's a great kid," she said. "And he wants to stay here." Brian has friends in the neighborhood and is a straight-A student at Northwood, going into sixth grade. He doesn't want to be uprooted again, his dad said — there's been too much change, too much loss in his life already. They got the name of attorney from a hospice nurse, and got a cash price, upfront, to file for guardianship to be transferred to Lisa: $3,800. "We both work at grocery stores. Let's face it, we don't make a lot of money," Dave said. They are trying to file that themselves, paying $250 — "I can handle that," Dave said — for a background check at the sheriff's office. They've researched adoption and realized they couldn't file it on their own — and the cost is exorbitant, about $30,000 to $40,000, they estimate. Some friends have organized a GoFundMe and spaghetti dinner fund raiser to be held July 31 at German's Villa in Vermilion. "I don't have that, I just do not," Dave said. "I know it's not going to raise no $40,000 for no spaghetti dinner, plus it still doesn't cover the cost of me dying, the cremation. I'm just trying to get as much as I can for my family." I got off the phone and sat in silence for a good long time before I could write this. I sat with the thought that Dave, a stranger to me, just told me how he'd instructed Brian to sprinkle his ashes in their private fishing hole "when all this is over and I finally die." I think of how Dave asked for a hospital bed so his frequent stirrings wouldn't wake Lisa, who is still working every day. But every time he opens his eyes, there she is, sitting next to him. "It made no difference," he said, the smile on his face as obvious as if I was in the room. "I love this woman." She answers: "I have so little time left. I want to spend every minute I can with him." I think of Dave telling me how he had to move out of the family home after Brian's mother passed. "Every day we'd come in the house, that's all I could see, where his mom laid, half-dead," Dave said. "That's all Brian could see. I had to get him out of there." Last week I attended a spaghetti dinner for another family, struck by the same deadly disease. Seems like that's what we do in small town America: Hope goodwill and spaghetti and raffles will make up for everything we lack. We pour out our love through carbs and buffet lines and it does my sentimental heart good to pack a banquet hall with 800 strangers for a common cause. If you want to help this family stay a family, the spaghetti dinner is at 5 p.m. July 31 at German's Villa, 3330 Liberty Ave., Vermilion. For tickets or to make donations, call Kimmy Jo at (440) 258-0693 or Stephanie Howell at (419) 706-7928 or purchase at the door. There will be raffle baskets and a 50/50 and a cash bar. There is also a GoFundMe for donations. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.