"Just in Case"

Terrie sat down in the floor, surrounded by what seemed to be a sea of cluttered envelopes and small files. She was exhausted from going through every corner of every thing that Dan had left behind.

"All junk! Just pure junk," she said, as the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Nothing but junk. Junk for me to figure out what to do with."

While she was upset at the moment, her distraught was not with Dan nor the fact that he had died and left her alone. Terrie knew that he had not left her on purpose and that it was not his fault in any way that his body had succumbed to the end stage COPD. The immediate upsetting part was that she had spent the biggest part of two days searching the house high and low for the twenty thousand dollars that he had seemed to misplace or simply lose before his last breathing episode would take his life.

Terrie felt her emotions take over as she rubbed the little black book, the address book which held all the phone numbers he had needed, which Dan had always kept by his bed. She had not thought of that little book in months, not since the day she had gathered up all Dan's personal belongings and placed them inside the oversized tote that she had slid into the closet. Now, it lay there on the very top of the cluttered mess of scattered papers and envelopes, as though it was there to remind her of all the long hours that Dan had been confined to his bed during the last few motnhs of his illness. Suddenly Terrie wanted to throw that little black book as far as she could throw it.

Suddenly all the memories came flooding back to her of him lying there in bed calling family and friends and chatting while watching television. The sight of him flipping through that little black book made her want to never see it again and at the same time to hold on to it with her very life force. The struggle of mixed emotions seemed to overwhelm her, now, at a time when almost any little thing could cause her tears to flow.

"I need help," she softly said underneath her struggle to not let out a scream of despair. "I need to find that money."

Terrie had been used to not working ourtside the home the past few years and after Dan's passing she was left with no income and no where to turn. She had known that day was a possibility, but deep down she had always pushed the thought aside. Her purpose had been her family and making sure everything ran smoothly from day to day. With the youngest of her three children now married and it just being Dan and her for the past few months, all her time had been consumed in caring for him. All thoughts of what ifs and unforeseen possibilities had been tucked away to deal with at later time. Now, months after Dan's passing, she was facing the real issues of life and the first priority would be how to pay these bills which were stacking up on a daily basis.

Just five months before Dan's passing his dad had given all his children forty thousand dollars each and she remembered now how happy she and Dan were to be able to pay of some bills and get back on their feet. A total of twenty thousand dollars had covered all the bills and allowed for them to give their youngest daughter a decent and nice wedding, levaing them a nice nest egg of twenty thousand dollars for saving.

"Don't worry about it; I have it put away in safe place," Dan had told her a month after he had gotten the money.

He was in the hospital, and given the fact that Terrie had never handled the money in their relationship, she had assumed that Dan had put it into the bank account. She worried that, perhaps, she might need to know where he kept the bank book to the savings account, just in case. However, Dan didn't seem to be worried and so she brushed her own worry off and chalked it up to a thought that she didn't need to be having at the moment.

Upon his release from the hospital a month later, Terrie had forgotten all about the money and asking him where he had put it. Then the wedding costs began to arise, flowers, food, the dress, and all the extras in which Dan was handing her cash to pay for everything. It crossed her mind that it was odd that he was not leaving the house to go to the bank and the thoughts hit her that he must have the money stashed in the house somewhere.

It was a few weeks after the wedding when she sat down on the bed beside him and began to question him about the twenty thousand dollars which was supposed to be saved. It had become apparent that Dan was getting sicker and she needed to know everything that was important at this point.

"Don't worry about it; we spent it," Dan had said while keeping his attention on the television program that he was watching.

Terrie was shocked because no matter how much she added it up, she could not come to one penny over twenty thousand dollars that they had spent and that included the wedding. She knew there had to be twenty thousand dollars left somewhere and at this point she began to wonder if Dan had just misplaced it and forgotten about having it. His oxygen levels were becoming low recently, and at times he seemed to be having issues with remembering simple things.

In order to not upset him, Terrie decided to drop the conversation that day, planning to return to the topic at a later time. However, a later time did not present itself because within a few more weeks Dan was back in the hospital with another breathing attack. This time was different than the other seven times over the past eighteen months. This time they were told that if it came down to him having to be on a ventilator he would have some decisions to make. He would have to either go a a trach and be placed in a nursing home for the rest of his life or he would have to choose to have the comfort care administered as he passed naturally.

This was a terrifying thought to both Dan and Terrie as well as to their youngest daughter Katie who had accompanied Terrie to the hospital that day. After hearing the doctor's words and having the nurse to repeat the options to them, making sure they had heard it right, Dan quietly asked Terrie to give him some time alone to think.

"We will just have to take extra care of your dad when he comes home. We will just have to make sure he doesn't catch a cold or have anything near him that could trigger any reactions to his COPD," Terrie said to Katie on the drive home that day. "We are just going to have to make sure he doesn't need that trach. "

Terrie was sure that they could do this and that Dan would be ok when he came home, but later the next evening Dan's brother was at the door saying that the hospital had called him and wanted the family to come in.

"They want us all to get there. Dan made the decision to have the comfort care after he had an attack this afternoon. They have already begun the comfort care and they say he might not make it through the night," Tom said. "You need to get up with Katie and you guys meet us all there."

Bringing herself back to the reality of now, Terrie rubbed her hand across the black book, remembering how Dan had passed that next day and how the past few months had been a blur to her. Remembering how she had set out on this quest to find the money that she knew that Dan could not have spent, how she had never gotten the opportunity to question him about it again, and how she herself had forgotten about it until the past few days, the past few days since the bills had begun to pile up like a bad nightmare.

The sun had begun to peek softly through the window as Terri awoke. At first she had no idea where she was and then she realized she must have fallen asleep on the soft shag rug at the foot of the bed. She realized she had fallen asleep in the middle of the papers from the tote, no doubt having cried herself to sleep and being exhausted from worry she had slept all through the night on the floor. Stirring around she felt the soft leather of the black book she was holding clutched to her chest and she smiled at the fact that she had never really looked inside of it to see what notes or anything else that Dan may have scribbled among the pages besides the addresses and phone numbers.

After making coffee and sitting down at the kitchen table with a steaming mug, Terrie placed the black book in front of her. It suddenly dawned on her that the book was terribly big for an address book, almost the size of a spiral notebook like the one the kids used at school. Terrie began to flip through the pages as she sipped her coffee. Names and phone numbers that she did not recognize were written along with many that were familiar. She saw where Dan had written her cell phone number in big block lettering at the top of the first page. She smiled because she knew he understood that if he needed her while she was shopping or at an appointment he could call her and she would be here in a moment.

"Oh, Dan, I miss you so much," she said through silent tears that ran down her cheeks and hit the page.

As Terrie flipped through the black book, she could feel that the back of it seemed to be heavy, as though something big was inside the back of the book. Flipping to the back of the book, she saw a manila envelope taped to the back inside cover of the book. Terrie smiled, wondering what she would find inside the envelope, thinking it was probably a ton of bank statements that Dan had saved over the years. Her fingers carefully removed the envelope and placed it in front of her on the table before lifting the flap.

As Terrie pulled the contents from the envelope, she could hardly believe what she was seeing. There falling onto the table, was a stack of one hundred dollar bills, crisp and new. She began to cry as she realized that was where Dan had placed the twenty thousand dollars that she had been searching for. She cried because she was so thankful that she had found it, but most of all she cried because she read what was written on the envelope.

"My Dearest Terrie, this is for you to use until you can find a job.....just in case."