{"id":109598,"date":"2025-05-16T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T05:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/?p=109598"},"modified":"2025-05-16T22:14:26","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T05:14:26","slug":"francine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/francine\/","title":{"rendered":"Francine: Where We are Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M<\/span>y beautiful bride of 17 years was taken to the emergency room at midnight of Easter Sunday. She was physically weak and having trouble with her memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Tacoma General Hospital, they ran every test you could imagine. They even sent a sample of her spinal fluid to the Mayo Clinic. On May 5, we received the final diagnosis from the neurologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are 98% certain that it is Creutzfeldt\u2013Jakob disease. This is basically the highest percentage of certainty they can have, as you can only achieve 100% certainty by means of a brain autopsy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This disease is fatal, and once symptoms appear, most of those afflicted die within months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we first received the diagnosis, Francine summed up the future this way: “O, my Jesus”. We will face the future together in love, walking eyes open as much as we can, forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 9, we moved Francine to hospice care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her decline has been shockingly fast. A month ago, she was hiking and writing. Now she cannot stand up unassisted, and she is largely nonverbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are the praying type, I ask that you do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning, as I was reading her some of Emily Dickinson’s poems, I was particularly struck by a line that I think captures Francine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

She dealt her pretty words like Blades \u2013<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know how to live without her. She is my life, my joy, my reason for wanting to be anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She made me better. She made me want to live up to the image of the man she saw in me. She challenged me. She loved me without reason or condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know how to live without her. I don’t know. She is my everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now I see her slowly dying, her light and life trapped in a dying brain. Struggling to get out, to shout, to wail, to make herself heard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She knows what’s happening to her. She knows it, and when first she heard the news she resolved to face it with a quiet power and dignity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sometimes, like today, the fear washes over her, the uncertainty of it, like a great tidal wave submerging her and dissolving her in wailing and lament and tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all I can do is hold her and tell her that I know. I know what she’s facing. What we are facing. And I tell her that we are facing it together, but of course, she is sliding into the abyss, and I am helpless to stop it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are on our last Camino, she and I. She is walking into the heavenly city, into the new Jerusalem, into the arms of our Lord. It should be a moment of hope and of joy. But right at this moment, the only thing I feel is loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loss of the love of my life, of course, but also the loss she is experiencing. The woman who made her life with words, losing her words. The woman whose strength and determination took her walking across countries, losing that strength. The woman who selflessly gave herself in service to countless others, now forced to rely on the service of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She always embraced the Benedictine charism of hospitality, and now she must come to terms with that other pillar of Benedictine spirituality: humility. She is, step by inexorable step, losing everything that was her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My beautiful bride of 17 years was taken to the emergency room at midnight of Easter Sunday. She was physically weak and having trouble with her memory. At Tacoma General Hospital, they ran every test you could imagine. They even sent a sample of her spinal fluid to the Mayo Clinic. On May 5, we received the final diagnosis from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-francine-my-love","category-meditations","category-moments-in-time"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/francine.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1aGBK-francine","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":109580,"url":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/francine-my-love\/","url_meta":{"origin":109598,"position":0},"title":"Francine, my Love","author":"Thom","date":"21 April 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"following the great Vigil of Easter, my beautiful bride Francine was admitted to Tacoma General Hospital. Symptoms were increasing mental confusion and physical weakness. She had recently suffered a bout of walking pneumonia, and during those days she was physically weak and had some small moments of forgetfulness and not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family"","block_context":{"text":"Family","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/category\/family\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Francine-20-April-2025-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Francine-20-April-2025-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Francine-20-April-2025-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Francine-20-April-2025-scaled.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":109833,"url":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/planning-the-via-lemovicensis-or-well-never-have-paris\/","url_meta":{"origin":109598,"position":1},"title":"Planning the Via Lemovicensis, or, We’ll Never Have Paris","author":"Thom","date":"29 September 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I plan to walk a long Camino for Francine. Some background is probably in order. At the annual Gathering of Pilgrims back in 2022, Francine attended a talk on one of the four main Camino routes in France: the Voie de V\u00e9zelay, also known as the Via Lemovicensis. 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God willing, I begin walking on pilgrimage from V\u00e9zelay, France, on April 9. It was Francine's dream to walk the Camino from V\u00e9zelay ever since she heard about this route in 2022. We have been actively planning this pilgrimage walk since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Camino"","block_context":{"text":"Camino","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/category\/camino\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VL-route-photos-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C760&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VL-route-photos-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C760&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VL-route-photos-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C760&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VL-route-photos-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C760&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VL-route-photos-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C760&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":84001,"url":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/one-year-ago-cows-and-a-great-evening-in-fonfria\/","url_meta":{"origin":109598,"position":3},"title":"One Year Ago: Cows! And a Great Evening in Fonfr\u00eda","author":"Thom","date":"25 April 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"(from my journal) Fonfr\u00eda 25 April 2013 First Breakfast in Vega Today we traveled, on and off, with Iain, Anja, and a lovely Korean lady named Isabel (or, as I like to call her, Bob). The climb to O\u2019Cebreiro was steep and rough, quite the toughest climb so far\u2026 but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Camino"","block_context":{"text":"Camino","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/category\/camino\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"First Breakfast in Vega","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/14002984075_8a753b16b6_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/14002984075_8a753b16b6_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/14002984075_8a753b16b6_b.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/14002984075_8a753b16b6_b.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":83970,"url":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/one-year-ago-a-bus-a-bridge-and-lavender-fields\/","url_meta":{"origin":109598,"position":4},"title":"One Year Ago: a Bus, a Bridge, and Lavender Fields","author":"Thom","date":"20 April 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"(from my journal) Astorga 20 April Breakfasted in the Benedictine hotel with Francine. We walked to the bus station \u2013 maybe 1.5 km \u2013 and caught the 9:30 bus to Hospital de \u00d3rbigo. Walked across town to Puente de \u00d3rbigo and walked across (and back across) the astonishing medieval bridge\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Camino"","block_context":{"text":"Camino","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/category\/camino\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Saint Benedict, Pray for Us!","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/9036259521_e22c7a6bb0_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/9036259521_e22c7a6bb0_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/9036259521_e22c7a6bb0_b.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/9036259521_e22c7a6bb0_b.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":51798,"url":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/amateurmonk\/snow-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":109598,"position":5},"title":"Snow!","author":"Thom","date":"15 March 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The photo here was taken by a pilgrim yesterday at Roncesvalles. 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