8/3/97

Half a lifetime together

Sometime back in the '50s, more than half of her life ago, she met him. She thinks it was at a ball game or something. Eve Kay Rutledge was her name. Charles Emerson Snook was his, but his friends called him Skip. They were there with a bunch of their friends from University of Dubuque. It wasn't a date or anything, but it soon would be, and they would be a couple.

This was long before they got married and had children, and now grandchildren. It was when they were young and didn't even think about death because they were in love--the kind of love that tingles, is the way he describes it. And they had their whole lives ahead of them.

On Aug. 12 Chuck and Eve Snook will be married 36 years, they still have their whole lives ahead of them, but Chuck's terminal cancer is a member of the family now, living at home and staying with them where ever they go.

Eva Kay, as Chuck calls her, is living through this remarkable journey right along side her husband, helping him, actually, by just not talking about it.

Both know where this unwanted family member will take them, but neither knows what starts and stops and turns it will take before it gets them there, and at this point, neither is interested in accommodating it, preferring, rather, to simply ignore it as long as they can. "Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative."

It's an old song.

"We just decided," Eve once said, "that you can't stop and think about this every minute."

And so they don't.

Chuck has made arrangements for hospice care should he need it; he's got his financial affairs in order; and he's planned his funeral. Eve even joked that he has things planned so well, he'll probably tell her what dress to wear to the funeral.

Preparing herself for that time, she said, "will be my charter.' I don't even know if I've done that."

Eve will return to teach library skills and run the learning center at Flanagan Grade School on Aug.18. In the meantime, they're having a summer vacation as close to like always as possible.

For Eve, it's filled with reading and quilting and sewing. She also belongs to Home Extension and attends monthly meetings.

She and Chuck go to movies occasionally, they shop and they have dinner out. They vacationed in Wisconsin earlier in the summer; and before school starts again, they'll visit South Dakota with friends.

There are a few differences she says she notices about their activities. They didn't host a family reunion this summer, as usual, because Eve said she didn't know Chuck would feel. They don't camp any more. And she tries to keep Chuck from lifting things. The cancer has spread to his bones, weakening them, and a break probably wouldn't heal.

So Chuck walks a lot slower now, and they hire somebody to mow the lawn. Otherwise, their activities are about the same.

Recently, Chuck was interviewed for a video dealing with the various stages of life, from before birth to death. Eve watched in the dark of the studio at Illinois State University. At one point when the tape was being changed and the camera was off, Chuck was asked what made his marriage last so long. Eve answered:

"We are exactly opposite," she said. "It's working. Let's not try to figure it out."

Earlier, in her living room, she said she admires what Chuck is doing, being so open about his cancer, but she would never do it. "If it were me," she said, "I wouldn't have told anybody."

When the tape rolled again, Chuck answered, and Eve listened: "It's a partnership," he said, "and you grow. Remember when you were young and you fell in love and you tingled? And you married that person."

And then, "The sexual part is no longer there, but it's nice to hold hands and tingle. ...And now, in our later years, we're comfortable."

Eve looks forward to seeing her grandchildren grow; and seeing her son, the youngest of their three children, become a teacher; and finishing her career in Flanagan schools. She loves Flanagan and she loves the farmhouse she and Chuck rent south of town. It's her dream house, she said, and she'd like to live there as long as she can.

Then she'll probably go back to Cordova, north of Moline, across the Mississippi River from their native Iowa and near where they began their teaching careers, where they lived for 14 years, where Chuck was mayor once and served on the town board, where they have old friends and where they still own a house.

Nothing, though, is certain except the past.

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