Memories of Kenny

My Life with Kenny

Kenneth Wayne Farmer  (1960-2023)

Memories of Kenny
____________________ 

by Carolyn Farmer

It was very early in our dating - I'm guessing it was the summer of 2014. Although we had known each other since high school, we didn't start dating until March, 2014, after each of us had gone through painful divorces. But together, we overcame, kept each other company, and became each other's sounding boards.

I was working at St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church at the time as organist and choir director. Kenny and I had volunteered to work that summer at Vacation Bible School (VBS). As a smaller congregation, our VBS was held in the evenings, most likely somewhere between 6:00 to 8:00. So Kenny and I firstly went out for dinner. For whatever reason, I decided to leave a review for the restaurant, and I started it with saying that I was having dinner with my best friend. Kenny picked up on this and did not let it go. Until we married a few years later, he always referred to me as his best friend.

After our dinner, we arrived at St. Mark's, and we went to work at our station, which was held on the newly renovated patio. Because our station was outside, we were in charge of the exploding diet coke bottle trick. This is where you put Mentos into the diet coke bottle, and it becomes a geyser. The kids loved it and so did Kenny. He was having a blast, and I was having fun watching him having a blast. He was very good with the kids.

I didn't have anything to do with planning VBS or the activities. Still, when the pastor saw what we were doing on "his" newly renovated patio, he also - like the coke bottle - erupted. 

One of the things that attracted Kenny to me - I'm sure of it - was my love of Star Trek. I was a huge trekkie growing up, but I had only ever watched The Original Series. He was excited to introduce me to all the newer Star Trek spin-offs. My favorite was Star Trek: Voyager. Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan? Get out of here! We were so excited to watch everything together. In a previous blog, I had written that Kenny and I had watched every Star Trek ever made in order twice, and that is true. But we also watched it the first time out of order, starting with The Next Generation.

One of the first stories I told Kenny was about how I went through a phase, as a child, of trying to talk with a Russian accent like Lt. Chekov in The Original Series. My mother once asked me if we needed anything at the store, and I told her we needed bread. She asked what kind of bread to get, so I said - very confidently - Vonder Bread! And she was like, "What?" Kenny thought that story was hilarious. He also was very impressed that I could play on the piano by ear the song that Spock sang in the episode entitled Subspace Rhapsody.

After we were married, I decided one year to have my own birthday party, and so I invited my dear friend, Carol, along with my daughter and her fiancé to breakfast. The menu was one-sided. When my daughter arrived, she and her fiancé sat down and started to look at the menu. Kenny said to the table, "there's more options on the back of the menu," I, knowing Kenny pretty well by this time, was stoic and did not touch my menu. My daughter, however, believed him and turned her menu over and saw for herself that there was nothing on the other side. Kenny thought this was hilarious and so did Stephanie's fiancé. Strike one up for the boys!

At another time with Stephanie and Chris, the four of us were at Bob Evans for breakfast. Kenny got his usual biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon. And not just a side of bacon, but it had to be chewy bacon. We were all talking and having a good time and Kenny was munching away on his chewy bacon. Then, when that plate was empty and full of bacon grease, he poured the bacon grease into his gravy and stirred it up. Stephanie and I had the biggest, widest eyes, but Chris whispered into Stephanie's ear, "Let the man live." Then Chris turned to Kenny and said, "You now how to live, don't you?" And Kenny replied, "Yes, I do!"

Kenny was quite the character and was always just doing things. He would turn the lights off in a room if there wasn't anyone in it, even if you had just left for one moment to grab something. He had this sense when there was a light on in a room that no one was in. If you left that room, you'd come back to it in the dark. He also couldn't sort laundry to save his life. I can't tell you how many times I had to take the washcloths out of the dish towel drawer and take them to the bathroom. Or how many times he put his Deaconess Hospital pin code into our front door keypad. And he would just giggle and shake his head whenever he did this, because, of course, the Deaconess pin code didn't work at home.

He loved turning my pages when I was playing the organ or piano at church, even though I could've done it on my own just fine. I used those little post-it tabs to mark my places on the music and one Sunday, with huge grandeur, he grabbed that tab to turn my page. The tab, of course, came off, and my page didn't get turned. 

But more than anything, Kenny was good in a crisis. How many times did he swoop in and save the day? I can't count them. He loved his dogs and his tomatoes, and his big green egg. He loved to sing, and he was good at it. We spent many an evening just singing together in our living room.

It has almost been a year since he's been gone. I have done pretty well as a widow, thanks to my support groups - which consists of my friends, my family, my students, and my church. But as a memorial to my late husband, I have made a new subset for this blog called My Life with Kenny. I will remember him the best way possible by writing his stories as best as I can remember.

© 2024 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC

My Husband’s Final Three Days

My Life with Kenny

Kenneth Wayne Farmer  (1960-2023)

My Husband’s Final Three Days
____________________ 

by Carolyn Farmer

The University of Louisville Hospital, as you may have guessed, is a teaching hospital. Doctors round each day with their students, and it felt like Kenny had a different doctor every single day while he was there. Every single day, the diagnoses and prognoses would be different. I would send a text out telling everyone what the doctor had said and quite literally, the next minute, another healthcare worker would tell me something completely different. I believe the disconnect was the copious amount of wine Kenny had been drinking. Drinking oneself to death is pretty common, actually. I know it now, but not then. Nor was this a diagnosis some wanted to accept, and I understand. Even so, alcohol abuse was listed on his death certificate as the contributing cause of his death. His severe outbreak of psoriasis didn't help.

Friday, March 17, 2023

U of L is BUSY. The Neuro ICU, where Kenny died, was a bustling hub of activity. Still, everyone there was sure to be quiet, because it was the Neuro ICU. People are trying to recover and noise can hinder that recovery, particularly those with neurological disorders.  And so I sat with my husband, as I had been doing the past 3 weeks, quietly reading and talking to him, even though he was unresponsive. Lunch was sushi in the cafeteria. I have a laundry list of foods I cannot eat, and I was ever so grateful for that sushi. Afternoons again were for quiet reading. Noise of any kind was strictly prohibited.

I cannot drive in the dark, because I cannot see in the dark. And this was a particularly dark March, I felt, not to mention that Louisville is an hour ahead of Evansville. I wouldn't be able to get on the interstate from my hotel to the hospital until nearly 7 am, because of the dark. Believe me, I tried. I decided to drive in the dark to the hospital one morning, and it was a disaster. I will never do it again. I nearly wrecked the car and thank God for his grace, I didn't, but I came awfully close. In the afternoons, I would leave the hospital around 4, so that I could be in the hotel room and settled before the darkness set in.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Saturday morning, I received great news!!! After many back-and-forth conversations, Kenny was approved for in-home hospice care. I was told to immediately leave for Evansville, where hospice would meet me, so that we could get the bedroom set up with a hospital bed and everything else I would need to take care of my husband. I was very excited on the drive home. Kenny was going to be able to come home! How grateful I was that he had finally been approved. I was going to bring Kenny home!

I wasn't back in Evansville for a minute when hospice called. The hospital, they said, had changed its mind - again. And then the hospital called to tell me that Kenny had taken a turn for the worst. That meant getting right back into the car and heading right back to the hospital - another 2-hour drive. Fortunately my daughter and future son-in-law decided to come get me and take me to the hospital, so that I wouldn't have to drive any more that day. And that's what we did. We drove back to Louisville.

I also had reached out to one of our church's vicars, Jason, to see if he could come deliver what you might call "last rites." I knew for certain by this time that my husband's death was imminent, and it was going to take place in Louisville. Jason was pleased, he said, to drive to Louisville to minister to my husband. When Jason got there, it was a quiet jubilation, a true celebration of Kenny's life and Kenny's Lutheran faith. We prayed together, Jason quietly played hymns on his phone, he blessed my husband, and "gave" him last communion - which, of course, Kenny could not ingest, so Jason improvised the best he could. The nurse thought Kenny would die the minute they took him off high-flow oxygen. So, while Jason was there, she turned it off. But he didn't die. He started breathing on his own.

After two hours, Jason headed back to Evansville. Later, Stephanie, Chris, and I got a hotel room together. We would go back the next morning to the hospital.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Just a repeat of the same. Sitting with Kenny. Listening to him breathe. Praying. But Chris had to work the next morning, so we, unfortunately, had to leave the hospital later that afternoon. I was dependent on Chris for my transportation; I had no choice but to come back to Evansville. We had gotten to Corydon - about 40 minutes from the hospital - when the hospital called to tell us to please come back, because Kenny's passing was imminent. And so, we went back, but he wasn't passing. We sat with him nearly two more hours, but he looked exactly the same as when we had left the first time. Chris was desperate to get back to Evansville, because of his work. And so, we left once more. Kenny was not alone, however, because thankfully his children had come to be with him.

Once I got back to Evansville that Sunday evening, I checked in with Kenny's nurse several times, and I was assured that Kenny was going to live through the night. The nurse was positive of it. And so, I reserved a hotel room for the next evening and planned to once more head to Louisville the next morning as soon as it was light outside. Unfortunately, Kenny passed that evening. The nurse called to let me know.

Evansville is essentially a small town and gossip travels fast, especially on social media. People were and still are angry at me with how I handled my husband's illness and death. Some also didn't understand that U of L has a no tolerance policy for visitors who, in their grief, get a bit out of hand. People were demanding answers from me, and I just didn't have them. On those last 3 days, all I knew was that my husband indeed was going to die, and that I was going to become a widow. I didn’t have room for anything else. Not only that, the hospital didn't have the answers, either. Again, so much of what happened was disconnected. One day it was like this, and the next day it was like that.

I loved Kenny very much. He came back into my life at a time when I really needed him. And he needed me, too. I can't tell you how many hours I held onto that man while he was crying over his second wife leaving him. He never got over it, but he did get through it. I know how much Kenny did for me and is still blessing me to this day.

We only ended up with 9 years together as a couple, but in those 9 years, we were truly helpmates to each other. I miss Kenny dearly and will continue to miss him the rest of my life. But I know where he's at, and I know he's safe, and I know we will be together again, even though, if I could have my way, Kenny would walk through the front door this very minute.

© 2023 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC