Tribute to a great man and writer, my fiance Charles Durham

Charles Edward Durham was – is – without a doubt the most extraordinary man I have ever met. He often lamented that we had not met earlier, yet had we crossed paths twenty, ten or even as little as five years ago, we might not have liked the people we were then. We meshed when we did because we had made mistakes in our lives and learned from them. We had walked through fire and been tempered in the flames. No one who truly lives avoids mistakes, and Charles lived more deeply and enthusiastically than most people.

Author of The Last Exile, Walk in the Light, Temptation—Help for Struggling Christians, and When You Are Feeling Lonely as well as unfinished manuscripts; minister to many congregations; editor; gunsmith; artist; historical reenactor; teacher; outdoorsman; philosopher: Charles was a man who fully experienced his life. He backpacked around Scotland while visiting daughter Rebekah, sailed with friends along the Pacific coast, spent months living in an isolated cabin writing a novel. When he began editing for iUniverse, he drove to Lincoln to meet the staff, so he could put faces to the voices he spoke with on the phone.

He was a man who saw no incongruity in a bookshelf lined with Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Cather and Calvin and Hobbes. Theological and psychological treatises shared space with the Time-Life Seafarers series. The gentle man who frowned at me for smashing a spider on the furniture went upland hunting last fall with his brother, a time they both clearly treasured. He continually preached and practiced loving-kindness, but slept with a pistol under his pillow (he was, after all, born in Texas). He not only did scrimshaw and wood carvings, he built rifles and pistols that were works of art. He professed an inability to cook, yet devised his own version of tuna salad that was an organic health food party. He read 14^th Century Middle Eastern poets and cried at movies, but he was the most manly man I ever encountered. He told his grandsons they could drink milk straight from the jug at the cabin as there were no women around. Because of his insatiable curiosity, he understood at least a little bit about a lot of subjects, often learned just by asking questions and letting people talk. He blended these apparent contradictions and this broad knowledge into a ministry that could relate to anyone, and he listened with true interest to everyone he came in contact with.

Dating Charles was an adventure that took us to a cemetery, where he quoted Poe’s “Annabel Lee” before crumbling mausoleums. We visited ice-coated wind generators, a Greek Orthodox cathedral and the foot of the Keeper of the Plains in a snowstorm. We took an outing to Clark County Lake and got hit by a deer. We even did dinner and a movie out—once. We discovered diverse tastes in books and music. He liked Sinatra and Jimmy Durante, while I preferred 70’s rock and modern country, but found common ground in Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond, and Barbra Steisand. I liked TV; he liked NPR. Yet the last time we listened to “Prairie Home Companion,” the musical guest was country artist Brad Paisley, and, trapped, he listened to “I’m Still a Guy.” He read everything, usually several books at once. I did the same, but leaned toward science fiction. He quoted both Islamic poet Rumi and Edgar Allen Poe. We both loved Tony Hillerman and Poe, but because of my comments about one of my all-time favorite books, he began listening to the audio version of Dune. We loved many of the same movies, and both enjoyed the miniseries Centennial. We never got the chance to go sailing, canoeing, camping, shooting or even traveling together, but were, to the last time we spent together, making plans for our future.

Disease is no respecter of persons. If it was, my enemies would be pushing up daisies now, and the people dearest to me would enjoy perfect health. Instead, disease prowls like a lion, picking its prey purely by chance. But God does not grant grace by chance. What the devil would intend to destroy, God uses for all manner of good purposes. The refining process of affliction brings precious metal (and mettle) to the surface. And in the mirror of the molten soul, we see God reflected. I saw this in Charles.

I was with him in the hospital room when the diagnosis came—acute myelogenous leukemia. While he sat trying to assimilate the news, he tasked me with calling his eldest son and daughter and his brother, not exactly the best way to introduce myself to the family. Yet, they couldn’t have been more gracious to me, due I suspect in part to the influence of their father and brother. Then, as he asked for time alone, I began the calls to my support network—my children, my friends and prayer partners, my bosses. I shed some tears and let the fear roll over me: after waiting a lifetime to find a love that was absolutely RIGHT, I might lose him. My kids and friends mobilized every prayer network they were involved in, as did Charles’ family and friends. Our support network promised, as did Jesus, not a perfect outcome, but that they would be there with us through this.

When he asked the doctor about his options, Dr. Dakhil cut to the chase. “You can fight or you can fold. Those are your choices.” Charles asked for time to make his decision. For nearly 24 hours he struggled with the choice. On the one hand, he said he was only a year short of his three-score and ten, and he had had a good life. He said the last couple of years had been the happiest of his life. He dreaded pain and discomfort. On the other hand, he felt he was doing a great deal of good and making a difference in the world where he was now. He did truly love his life as it stood at that moment. He chose to fight, though he was prepared if it went the other way.

About half of our relationship was spent in the hospital. That’s where I learned the true depth of this man’s character. In the movie Hitch, which we watched there one evening, Hitch tells a woman that there are two kinds of people in the world. One walks into a room and says, “Here I am!” The other enters a room and says, “There you are.” Charles was definitely the “there you are” kind of man. He tried to learn the names of all of the staff, from housekeeping to nursing, who entered his hospital room, and asked them what kind of day they were having. He hated to trouble any of the staff for the milkshakes he liked so well, but they always reassured him it was no trouble. He was clearly the favorite of many of the staff. Though he denied it, I called him “nurses’ pet.”

When I had to leave him at the hospital, I felt like I had abandoned my puppy at the pound, those soulful puppy eyes following me to the door. And when I returned and our eyes met, time stopped for a heartbeat and both of us breathed a long, satisfied “Ahhh” in our souls, as if we’d just had a thirst-quenching draught of cool spring water, and all was in place in the universe once more.

One afternoon during his last hospitalization, he mentioned he was tired and wanted a nap. I agreed it sounded like a good idea, so I stretched out in the recliner beside his bed. When I awoke an hour or so later, the setting sun would have been in my eyes, except for the fact that he had gathered his blankets in his hand and rested his hand on “Matilda,” the IV pole he often had to waltz with, so that the blanket shaded my face. That’s just the kind of sacrificial love he showed every day.

Every day I learned from Charles how better to treat people. When visitors would come into his room or his house to cheer him, he usually ended up ministering to them. During his battle with leukemia, friends came out of the woodwork to contact him, from high school classmates to people he had only met during his hospital stay. Pastors from several churches came to visit regularly. He had a way of bringing people together who would ordinarily not interact, and making them all the better for it.

Charles was probably the most humble man I ever met. It was months into his membership in our writing group before we found out he had published a successful novel, and months after that before we heard about the second. I didn’t learn until after we began dating that he had also published two non-fiction books. He showed me some photos from reenactments in which he participated, and finally admitted that he won some shooting contests. Evidently, he was not only a wonderful gunsmith, but also an expert marksman. But the most telling example of his humility came one afternoon when he surveyed the plethora of cards and photos on his windowsill, the books and movies that had been sent to him, and tears filled his eyes (not an uncommon thing with Charles). He worried that he had fooled people somehow into believing he was a better person than he thought he was. I told him then that we should never think better of ourselves than other people do, because to do so would be to commit the sin of pride, but that all of these people genuinely loved him, because of the kind of man he was. He hadn’t fooled anyone.

He said, early on in his battle, that he wasn’t afraid of dying, that in fact he was looking forward to the next part of the adventure. His only regret was the pain those he left behind would feel. I don’t think any man ever loved his children and grandchildren more than Charles loved his family. First Corinthians 13 says: If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing. By this standard, Charles had everything, for he had love for all God’s creation, most especially the people in it.

The last sermon he preached, on Palm Sunday, was one of his best. In it, he talked about how we are only tested over unacceptable circumstances. If they were acceptable, it wouldn’t be a test. He also mentioned the fact that he needed to learn to “offer up” his illness. I asked him to copy that sermon for me on a thumb drive, then forwarded it to my kids. My son’s girlfriend Kim, who is herself facing a test over unacceptable circumstances, had this observation of the sermon:

I also think that even though they are unacceptable, they may still be overcomeable. In my eyes, Charles lost his battle to leukemia, but still overcame the situation. He did learn how to "offer it up," and that is why I believe he is enjoying his great adventure and watching you very closely to ensure that you learn the same.

Several times over the past two months, Charles urged me to abandon him, cut my losses and walk away. I told him then, that whether he passed that day, in a month or twenty years from that day, it was too late: he would leave a hole in my heart that would never fill. Had we had another year, another ten, or even fifty, it would never have been enough. I would have wanted more time with him. I treasure every second I had with him, and hope that what I learned from loving him will continue to make me a better person.>

Charles often made fun of my fondness for country music, yet he was continually surprised by the appropriate truisms I quoted from popular songs. And somehow, I think both of us knew at the beginning that the odds were against us having much future together. Had I known six months ago that things would have ended this way, I hope I would have had the wisdom not to change my choices. In the words of Garth Brooks’ “The Dance:”

Looking back on the memory of

The dance we shared ‘neath the stars above.

For a moment, all the world was right.
How could I have known that you’d ever say goodbye.



And now, I’m glad I didn’t know

The way it all would end, the way it all would go.

Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain

But I’d have had to miss the dance.