Robert Henry

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My Husband Fell Asleep In the Front Pew During Our Granddaughter's Baptism. He Missed the Moment They Poured the Water On Her Head. I'm 60. My Husband Bill Is 62. Our granddaughter Josie was baptized on a Sunday in October, at the same church Bill and I got married in thirty-seven years ago. The whole family was there — our son Mark and his wife Kayla, Josie in the same christening gown Kayla wore as a baby, about thirty of us filling the first four pews. Bill was sitting next to me in the front pew. Mark had asked him to be there, right up close, so Bill could see everything. The priest called the family forward. Mark and Kayla stood at the font holding Josie. The priest poured the water. Everyone leaned in. I turned to nudge Bill so he wouldn't miss it. His eyes were closed. His chin was down. His hands were folded in his lap like he was praying, except he wasn't praying. He was asleep. He missed it. The whole thing. The water, Josie's little gasp, the whole church laughing when she squawked. I elbowed him harder than I meant to. He startled awake and clapped along with everyone else a half-second late, like he'd caught the tail end of something and was pretending he'd seen the start. Nobody else noticed, I don't think. Mark was looking at his daughter. Kayla was crying happy tears. I don't think anyone in that church saw what I saw except me. I sat there for the rest of the service not really hearing any of it. I want to tell you what I felt, because I think other wives will recognize it. I felt embarrassed first — embarrassed for him, embarrassed that I'd have to explain it away if anyone asked. Then, underneath that, I felt something closer to grief. My husband had just slept through his granddaughter's baptism, sitting up, in a pew, in a church full of people who love him, and some part of me understood that this wasn't tiredness anymore. This was something else. And I had been calling it tiredness for close to two years. I'm Karen. I'm 60. I taught third grade for twenty-six years and retired three years ago. Bill is 62. He ran the maintenance department for our school district for almost thirty years — the guy who kept every boiler, every roof, every bus running. He retired eighteen months before I did. We've been married thirty-seven years. Two kids — Mark, thirty-three, and our daughter Emily, thirty, who lives an hour away with her husband. Four grandkids between them now, Josie being the newest. Bill was, for almost forty years, a fixer. Not in some abstract way — literally. If something in our house broke, it got fixed within the week, usually within the day. If something broke at school, three hundred kids and forty teachers didn't have to think about it, because Bill had already thought about it. For the last two years, Bill had stopped fixing things. I want to walk you through how I let myself not notice, because I think a lot of wives will recognize this pattern too. The recliner. Bill bought a recliner when he retired — a big brown thing, more chair than a man his size should really need, but he loved it. By last winter, he was in it every night by 7:30, asleep by 8:15, and I'd find him there at 11 when I came down to lock up, mouth open, TV still on some show he'd never admit to watching. I told myself: he worked thirty years on his feet. He's earned the chair. The garage. Bill has a workbench in the garage that used to be the busiest six feet of our property. Lawnmower tune-ups, bike repairs for the grandkids, a birdhouse project he did every Christmas to give away. Sometime last year I noticed the bench had gone quiet. He'd go out there Saturday mornings, and I'd hear nothing — no radio, no tools, no sawing. He'd come back in an hour later and I never asked what he'd been doing out there, because some part of me didn't want to know the answer was nothing. The dog. We have a golden retriever named Biscuit. Bill used to walk her every morning before I was even up, rain or shine, for years. Sometime last year that stopped too. I started walking her myself, and told myself it was good for me, that I liked the morning air, and didn't examine too closely why Bill wasn't the one out there anymore. The driving. Bill drove everywhere, always, for thirty-seven years. Last spring I noticed I'd been driving us to church, to the grocery store, to Mark's house, for months, without either of us ever discussing when that had changed. I told myself all of it was normal retirement slowing-down. Bill told himself the same thing, I think, or told himself nothing at all and just let the days happen to him. The baptism is the day I stopped being able to tell myself that. That evening, after everyone had gone home, Bill and I were sitting in the kitchen. He hadn't said much since church. He said, "Karen. I fell asleep, didn't I." I said, "You did." He said, "I missed it. I missed the water." I said, "You did." He put his head in his hands. He's not a man who does that. In thirty-seven years I could count on one hand the times I'd seen Bill Sr. cry, and this wasn't quite that, but it was close. He said, "Something's wrong with me, Karen. I've known for a while. I just haven't said it out loud." I said, "I know, Bill." He looked up. He said, "You knew?" I said, "I've known for a long time. I was waiting for you to be ready to say it." He said, "I'm ready now." He called his doctor the next morning. Dr. Powell has been Bill's doctor for almost twenty years. Bill told him everything — the recliner, the garage, the dog, the driving, and finally, the baptism. Dr. Powell ran a full panel. Thorough — thyroid, testosterone, vitamin D, inflammatory markers, the works. He called Bill himself, which Bill said he doesn't usually do. He said, "Bill, nothing here is an emergency. But your testosterone's on the low end for your age. Your vitamin D is low. Your inflammatory markers are a little elevated. Nothing's broken. A lot of things are running soft." He told Bill what I've since heard described the same way by two other men our age — that this kind of quiet slowing isn't a disease with a clean name, it's a cellular thing, a body doing less of the work it used to do on autopilot, especially common in men who've recently gone from physical work to sitting at home. He told Bill to walk every morning, watch his protein, get on a regular sleep schedule. I want to tell you about my friend Diane, because Diane is where this story turns. Diane's husband Ray went through something almost identical about two years before Bill did. I'd known about it in the vague way you know things about a friend's marriage — a comment here, a comment there — but I'd never asked her to explain it. I called her the week after the baptism. We had coffee. I told her everything. She listened all the way through, the way a woman listens when she's been exactly where you are. She said, "Karen, I'm going to tell you what worked for Ray, but I want to say up front — the doctor has to be in charge of this, always. What I'm about to tell you is what we added on top of what Ray's doctor already had him doing." She told me Ray walked every morning, no exceptions, starting small and building up. She told me they'd cut back on the takeout and started actually cooking again. She told me Ray went to bed at a real hour instead of falling asleep in the chair and coming up at midnight. And she told me about a supplement — real Himalayan shilajit, from a brand called Xara Shilajit, that Ray's doctor had approved after looking at the label. Third-party lab tested, she said, no proprietary blend hiding what's actually in it. She said Ray had been taking it for almost two years. She said, "I'm not telling you it's a miracle. I'm telling you it's one part of four parts. The walking mattered most. But Ray still takes it every morning, and so do I, if I'm honest — I started about six months after he did." Bill brought all of it to Dr. Powell at his follow-up. Dr. Powell looked at the label, said it looked reasonable as an addition alongside the walking and the sleep changes, and gave Bill the go-ahead. Bill started the following Monday. Walking, and the gummies with his coffee, every morning. I'm going to be honest, the way Diane was honest with me: for the first three weeks, nothing changed. Bill walked Biscuit every morning out of what I think was pure stubbornness, and I don't think he felt any different at all. Around week five, I came downstairs on a Tuesday and there was a note on the kitchen table in Bill's handwriting. It said: Took the dog for a walk. Back by 5. I stood there holding that scrap of paper for a long time. Bill hadn't left me a note like that in over a year. He hadn't needed to — he hadn't been the one walking the dog. I sat down at the kitchen table and I looked at that little piece of paper like it was the most important thing anyone had ever written me, because in a way it was. He came back at 5:10, Biscuit trotting ahead of him, both of them a little out of breath, both of them looking pleased with themselves. Around week seven, I came into the living room one evening and the recliner was empty. Bill was out in the garage. I could hear the radio on, and something that sounded like an actual tool being used on an actual thing. He was fixing the latch on the birdhouse he'd never gotten around to last Christmas. It's been about five months now. Bill walks every morning, rain or shine, same as he used to. He drives us to church. He fixed the fence gate that had been sagging since spring. He falls asleep in the recliner sometimes, the normal way a man falls asleep after a long day — not the way he used to disappear into it at 7:30 every single night. We went to Emily's for her birthday last month. Bill stayed up past ten, telling stories, laughing at things, present the whole evening. He drove us home. I have not seen him fall asleep sitting up since the baptism. If you're a wife who has been watching her husband quietly fade — in the chair, in the garage, behind the wheel he stopped wanting to hold — please don't wait as long as I did. I told myself two years' worth of small things were nothing. They weren't nothing. They were the same thing, wearing different clothes, over and over. Have the conversation before your version of the baptism happens. You don't need a moment like that to give yourself permission to ask. ~ Karen T. P.S. — Our 4th of July Sale is extended right now, up to 75% OFF, no code needed. Give it at least four to six weeks. Bill felt nothing for the first three. That's normal — don't let him quit early. P.P.S. — Diane and I have coffee every other week now. We didn't used to. It came out of this. If you don't have a Diane — a friend who's already been through it — find one, or find a nurse, or a sister, or anyone who'll hold part of the weight with you while you figure out what to do. It's too heavy to carry by yourself. I know, because I tried for two years. P.P.P.S. — Josie's second baptism-adjacent event — her first birthday, this past January — Bill stayed awake for the entire thing, cake and all, and got down on the floor to help her blow out her candle. Emily has a photo of it on her fridge. I look at it more than I probably should. P.P.P.P.S. — One last thing. If you're the husband reading this over your wife's shoulder — and I know some of you are — please don't wait for someone to have to elbow you awake in a church pew. Call your doctor. Tell him about the chair, the quiet garage, the driving you stopped wanting to do. He'll probably tell you the same unglamorous things he told Bill. Do them anyway. https://www.xarashilajit.com/products/xara-shilajit%C2%AE-10-in-1-alpha-gummies-1