The Prayer of Easter
by Deborah (Roe) Stratmann
Rebecca was in pain much of the time from age 16 until the day she died at 26. When her kidneys failed, she had to leave college and live at home. The hospital in Lincoln wouldn't run her on longer dialysis (you could run at six or eight hours - the shorter time is harder on your body), so my mom would drive her to Omaha three days a week, where UNO Med Center hospital would run her at the longer time. They did this until they spun out in a rainstorm on the way home one day, after which they went to Mayo's and trained for home dialysis.
Rebecca and I went through the tests to see if I could give her one of my kidneys, but there was one test that showed incompatibility, so when my dad was moved from Lincoln to Shelton, Rebecca went with my parents. She was a very social person, and the move and isolation were very difficult for her. She tried driving herself to classes at Kearney State for awhile, but it was too much for her body. (My mom was teaching full time and couldn't drive her.)
It was during this time that Rebecca wrote this piece. After a year or so of this, she decided she wanted to move back to Lincoln, where she had to go back to dialyzing at the same hospital that was so uncooperative six years prior. The hospital hadn't changed.
Rebecca loved attending her church and being in an educational atmosphere, so she found an apartment a block from her church and the NWU campus. However, the hospital scheduled her for dialysis on Sunday mornings at 6 a.m. It was a hard winter that year, and she got herself up, cleared the car, and drove herself to dialysis.
She participated in as much as she could at the church and NWU. She moved back to Lincoln in September of 1977, knowing that the extra stress of being on her own could shorten her life even further. At that time, she had already outlived the doctor's prediction by 4.5 years (they only gave her a year after her kidneys failed).
She died on Good Friday (March 24), 1978, having lived as much as she could those last six months. The autopsy showed she had died from an aneurysm in the aortic arch that had burst. They also discovered bits of bone around her ribs where her body had difficulty healing numerous cracked ribs over the years. (Her bones were brittle from strong medicines, and whenever she would get sick and cough, if she coughed too hard, she would crack a rib.)
She loved life and was a vibrant spirit, marching to the beat of her own drum and, in one place we lived, teased and called names for that. From the time she learned to sew, she made nearly all of her clothes, including her swim suit, winter coat, and satin prom dress with a ruffle around the back (satin is difficult to work with - you have to put tissue between the material to keep it from slipping when you sew, and you can't make mistakes because the needle marks will show).
The last thing she created was a banner of colorful butterflies for her church which said, "You can fly, but that cocoon has to go." She's been flying for a long time now.
