Everything Love Brings....The Story Of Losing My Best Friend And The Community Which Helped Me Through It

By Don Carpenter

Everything Love Brings is the story of a woman named Darlene Carpenter, a community called Cascade, Iowa, and two years which featured tremendous fear, sorrow and loss. It’s also a little bit about recovery and moving on with the help of people who love me.

You’ll meet Darlene, a sweet, kind and caring gal who touched many lives from the Luther Leaguers she worked with when she was younger to countless Cascade folks in the final years of her life. You’ll meet Floyd Carpenter and Cecil Chapman. Floyd was Darlene’s husband of 47 years while Cecil was one of her first sweeties and many years later, her last. You’ll read about Floyd and Cecil’s impact on Mom and myself. You’ll also learn about the courage of all three during their final days.

You’ll be introduced to Cascade, a city of 2,000 located in northeast Iowa. It’s the hometown of baseball Hall of Famer Red Faber, pro basketball player Ashley Arlen, Creighton University men’s basketball coach Greg McDermott, University of Iowa sports announcer Gary Dolphin and San Diego Padres pitcher Colin Rea. That’s all impressive, but the reason I want you to know about Cascade is because during my 12 years as part of it both professionally and personally it has been so good to me. During Mom’s decline, Cascaders kept us in their thoughts, cried with and for me and said no matter how many times I was knocked on my ass they would help me up.

You’ll also meet me. I will make you laugh. At some point, I may make you cry. I might even make you wish you could hold me in a long hug. I know with certainty I will make you want to pull your hair out as I kind of do that to anyone who gets to know me.

This is not a guide to caring for loved ones or on how to grieve. This is just my little memoir about losing an incredibly wonderful person and having amazing people help me through it. It’s about everything love brings-the happiness which comes from having someone to care for and have someone care about you, all the emotions which come when you realize you’re losing that someone and the strength which comes when you have someone to pull you through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Carpenter
• Release date: Feb 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370770748

Book preview

Everything Love Brings

By Don Carpenter

Copyright 2017 Don Carpenter

Smashwords Edition

Everything Love Brings is dedicated to the following ladies

To Beth Lutgen for your friendship, support, belief in me, willingness to fight for me, understanding me and being the best person I ever worked for.

To Lisa, Anna, Annie, Riley, Dani, Laura, Kylie, Annebel, Abbie, Shannon, Kendra, Brittany, Kelly, Rachel, Cassie, all the Goofballs who came before and all who will come hereafter. To me, you will always be the best thing about Cascade.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold

or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person,

please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did

not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your

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work of this author

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Darlene

Chapter 2 Family

Chapter 3-Floyd

Chapter 4 Cecil

Chapter 5 Dark Times

Chapter 6 Goofballs

Chapter 7 Smiles

Chapter 8-Decline

Chapter 9 Alone

Chapter 10-Disaster

Chapter 11-Decision

Chapter 12-Admission

Chapter 13-Mom’s New Home

Chapter 14-1934-2015

Chapter 15-Loved Ones

Chapter 16-The Days After

Prologue

When my father passed away in November of 2001, my mother and I weren’t practicing churchgoers. We belonged to Immanuel Lutheran in Earlville but didn’t care to be there much. Our reasoning was partly because we weren’t thrilled with some of the members because of a silly feud stretching back to my high school days. It was also because while Mom wanted to go at least occasionally, I felt I had outgrown church. When Immanuel closed in 2008, Mom was tremendously upset, while I felt almost vindictive happiness.

In 2001, we were still on the membership roll and Immanuel was kind enough to host Dad’s funeral. Nonetheless, we weren’t overly thrilled with the minister. Mom was leery of him because she was coming under the impression seminary schools were turning out awful clergy. I thought he was incredibly arrogant.

At our first meeting, the minister commented he didn’t like reading the obituary aloud at services. Every time I had attended a service, reading and hearing the obituary was the most important part to me. I wanted to know about the person’s life. After the minister made his comment, I thought, Fine, when you die, we’ll make sure nobody reads your obituary. I was amazed at his total inability to grasp who was working for who. Mom politely told him the obituary would be read.

In a way, this book is an obituary. You will read stories about someone I loved with all my heart. The obituary will lean heavily towards the end of Darlene Carpenter’s life and the bravery she showed during it.

Mom’s final months were the roughest of my life. For the longest time, I didn’t want people to think I couldn’t cope. She was my mom and I was going to handle it. The thing was, as the winter of 2015 went on, I realized I couldn’t handle things anymore. A few years ago, Dubuque writer Jim Swenson wrote a book about dealing with the terminal illness of a loved one. It was entitled A Man in Mourning…God, I Hope Did It Right. There were plenty of times during Mom’s winter I thought the title of my book would be, God, I Know I’m Messing This Up.

Writing is how I communicate with people. When having verbal conversations with folks, I often become nervous and stilted. Things become awkward for both those listening and myself. Making things worse is the confusion I cause by being extroverted one moment and then turning introverted the next.

I’m always extroverted when I write. There will be times when you’ll be stunned at what you read. Many other times, you will hopefully break out laughing. More than anything, I hope you will come to love Darlene Carpenter. When Mom’s end arrives, I hope I have a done an acceptable enough job of writing that you feel some sorrow.

You will learn plenty about myself while going through this journey, but I should share a little about me to start you on your way.

I am 46 years old and this spring started focusing on my freelance writing career after 11 years as a sportswriter with the Cascade Pioneer and Dyersville Commercial. Until November of 2015, I lived in the Earlville area all my life. After spending a few months in Dyersville, I moved to Cascade in February of 2016.

Before I was hired to write for the Commercial and Pioneer, I had only been in Cascade a handful of times. But as things went on, it became my emotional hometown. I was impressed with how often Cascade folks thanked me for being at their contests. As you will see, this eventually led to developing friendships with Cougar coaches, teachers, parents and kids. They are also a big part of this story. I’ll start this adventure by telling you about a gymnasium. One which was a dream the Cascade community had worked hard to make a reality.

Chapter One-Darlene

It was my pride and joy. Feeling that way was silly because I had absolutely nothing to do with the building being in my life. In the spring of 2012, voters in the Western Dubuque school district approved a plan to build an auditorium for Western Dubuque High School in Epworth and a gymnasium for Cascade High School. Construction of the gym began in June of 2013 and the work was almost finished a year later.

I was at a Cascade Class of 2014 graduation party when a Western Dubuque district faculty member asked if I had been in the new facility yet.

You can do that?

You can if you know the right person.

Do I know the right person?

You do.

I was happy. Not only was I going to set foot in our new home, I would be doing so in a mischievous way.

Cascade’s old gym had served the community well, but it was time for a change. The old gym had bleachers on only one side with a stage on the other. Its ceiling was low enough to where sometimes volleyball rallies resembled pinball games.

Walking into the new gym was the same as entering a futuristic world. The incredible east wall took my breath away. Made up of windows, it was unlike anything I’d seen. Then there were the spacious concourses where people could either mingle or watch the events. At the time of this first visit, the bleachers hadn’t been installed, but even without them, the floor space looked magnificent. I wasn’t sure if the gym was going to be named after someone but later had my own suggestion if it was. There was once a volleyball coach from another school Cascade played who was a boom boom hottie. I thought it would be appropriate to call our home the Cute Blonde Coach Gymnasium because she was the only thing as beautiful as this facility.

Building our gym was not done for only cosmetic reasons. Cascade could now host bigger crowds which meant it could host more River Valley Conference and post-season events. Two years in, it has served its purpose wonderfully.

In the summer of 2014, the facility represented the bright future I had. As new opportunities were opening for CHS because of our new gym, I also had new prospects. Things were picking up financially, life was calm and I was beginning to think about Mom and myself moving to Cascade.

But in one of the many ways you’ll see my mind being different from everyone else’s, as the 2014-15 school year went on, I came to associate our gym the most awful experience of my life. It was opening at the same time as a period of confusion, pain and sorrow started for me.

***

Darlene Brockhohn was born in Monticello on Aug. 24, 1934. Along with her parents and her brother Lawrence, she lived on the Brockhohn homestead located about halfway between Monticello and Anamosa.

In 1954, after a three-year courtship, Darlene married Floyd Carpenter and until 1995 they farmed on the Carpenter homestead three miles north of Earlville. Along with crop farming, the Carpenters raised hogs at first and then switched to dairy cattle. Toward the end of their farming careers, they housed horses for renters. In 1994, Floyd and Darlene bought the home in Earlville where Floyd’s sister and brother-in-law, Delpha and Russell Gull had lived. Starting in 1995, Floyd and Darlene rented the farm to different neighbors before selling it three years later.

When they moved to Earlville, the Carpenters looked for something to do. In the summer of 1996, Earlville’s Fairview Cemetery had a problem. The individual contracted to mow the facility told its board he was headed to Missouri. One of the board members queried Floyd and Darlene and the two long-time farmers said they would finish out the season. Floyd continued to mow Fairview until 2001 and Darlene continued until 2008.

In September of 2001, Floyd was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Darlene took care of him until his passing on November 10 of the same year. Darlene and her son Don stayed together in the home for the rest of her life. In December of 2003, Darlene saw Cecil Chapman at an Earlville funeral. They had dated before Darlene met Floyd and now spent eight wonderful years together before Cecil’s death in December of 2011.

***

Despite some bumps and