The Deer Story

I have to tell you about the deer. As I’ve teased, it’s the biggest God stamp yet in this journey (at least for me). For those who attended Dana’s celebration service (I’m still not used to certain possessive phrases such as Dana’s service, grave, arrangements, etc.), you heard the story. I’ll try to insert new information to keep it interesting!


This past spring two deer suddenly appeared in our backyard, a doe and her fawn (fawn pic above). Here’s the thing: we live in the middle of town. We’ve lived at this house 10 years and have NEVER had deer in our yard. But this spring they would lie down in the morning. Then they would leave for the day, go do deer kinds of things, and then came back in the evening. This went on for a few days, and they visited only our yard. Our neighbors jealously commented on this fact. Then Dana asked eerily: “What if the deer are here to take me to heaven?” She didn’t ask that in a “yeah, rah” manner, but more in a haunting, spooky way. The thought of heaven itself wasn’t spooky, but the thought of us not being together certainly was.

The spring visits from the deer lasted just a few days, but then later in the summer, around August, the deer came back. This time it was two, more mature, fawns (in the pic below). They would leave before Dana climbed out of bed each morning, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her they returned. They came about four days in a row. I was a bit freaked.


Fast forward now to September. We went into the hospital for treatment of the breast cancer’s spread, expecting to be there a few days. We were there for four weeks. We went from “you may need a walker when you get home,” to “you may need a bed downstairs” to “Hospice is an option” to “Hospice is the best option.” So after four weeks in the hospital, we came home with Hospice.

After we had been home for a few weeks I found myself running the range of emotions: confusion, fear…well actually I pretty much just ping-ponged between confusion and fear. Landing mostly on fear. One evening, after tucking Dane in and settling into my mattress on the living room floor beside Dane’s bed, I was desperate for some comfort. But more specifically, I was desperate for some comfort from Dane. It had been over a month since we had had meaningful, interactive Dane and Bear conversation. Then I remembered an article she had written three years earlier, when we had started this recurrence battle. I remembered the article contained several hymns that Dana had quoted. I was looking for that kind of comfort.

The article she wrote was entitled, “Kill the Deer.” [I will soon post the article so you can read the whole thing.]

It starts by Dana explaining the nature of the church we attended at the time, Crossroads in Cincinnati. Everything they did was cutting edge and if you heard a hymn there, you’d barely recognize it because it would have been “repackaged, reharmonized, rebuilt, repurposed, scrubbed, disinfected and dipped for fleas.” Dana went on to describe why this resonated with us: God was always doing a new thing and we should find inventive ways to follow God’s lead, lest we fall into meaningless ritual.

Dana recounted the story of a youth group that had gone to the well one too many times with the popular song “As the Deer Panteth for the Water.” It’s a song that always evoked response in kids. But one night after the song was sung, nothing happened. A student said what all were thinking: “It’s time to kill the deer.”

Dana wrote how this resonated with her.

As a “new song” kind of girl, I suppose I’ve also been something of a “kill the deer” girl. I may not know much, but I do know when it’s time to move on.

And here is how she finished the article:

I live in a small Midwestern community where what I can only describe as a dire lack of Starbucks is offset by an easygoing, everybody-knows-your-name kind of charm. There’s also a good library, a bike path along the river … and church bells.

My house is a half-mile from the Presbyterian church, which means that when the wind blows just right, I can catch the church bells three times a day. Throughout this long cancer journey, I’ve gotten so good at minimizing (make that faking) to others what the anxieties of illness and the side effects of chemo feel like, that there are days—weeks even—when I’m pretty sure nobody knows what I feel like. What demons I’m staring down. What particular brand of comfort I need.

But the church bells know.

At nine a.m. they ring, “I need Thee, oh I need Thee! Every hour I need Thee!”
Yes, you’re so right! I say back to the bells. I do need him. Every hour—every minute, and you knew!

At noon they sing out: “When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed and the day is half done …”

I barely remember when and where I first heard those words. From the lips of my grandmother, perhaps. Surely she knew a lot about endurance. Older ladies always do. And if you listen closely, you can hear those ladies whisper about the grace … grace that has pulled them through whatever this life has dished out. The kind of grace the bells toll out as the noontime song concludes.

At six p.m., when we sit down for dinner on the front porch, the bells say, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear…”

Needless pain? Ooooh-doggy, I’ve had my share of that. And the church bells don’t just remind me of the pain, they give me the reason: “All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”

Today I’m feeling good about the whole cancer thing. I slept well last night. The new chemo seems to be working. There’s a fresh wind of productivity blowing through my writing. And the nausea … well, three out of four ain’t bad.

Still, as noon approaches, I can’t wait to hear what the bells might have to say. I step outside to water the pots on my porch, but really to listen.

This time it’s an 18th-century melody that’s one of my favorites.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,I will not, I will not desert to its foes;That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

I don’t want the bells to stop. I want them to play this song on and on, all afternoon and into tomorrow. Because if there’s anything that “endeavors to shake”—that endeavors to knock me clean off my moorings—it’s what I’m facing now.

But will it?

Never, say the bells. No never. No never. No never.

And suddenly I find that I’m not quite ready to kill the deer. I think I’ll keep him with me for awhile. I’ll let him roam in my garden at nine, noon and six, speaking words of peace I need to hear.

I’ll let him nestle in the grass near my porch swing—reassuring me with the same calm assurances that comforted my grandmother … and her grandmother, too.

I’ll let him gently nibble on the hostas under my bay window, and remind me just by being here that I am held safe in an enormously wonderful hand.

Wow. Wow! Remember, she’s writing this three years before the actual deer show up in our actual yard and three years before Dana actually asked “I wonder if the deer are here to take me to heaven?” Going by the picture she painted of inviting the deer into her yard, we now know the answer.

I’ll talk more about what this meant for me in future posts (this post is already long enough). Suffice to say that that night as I lay in my bed on the living room floor beside Dana’s Hospice bed reading her article, I was crying for my situation and laughing at God’s timing.