Carol is pictured here as a child.
Pictured are (from left) Carol, Suzanne, Janelle, and Steve Crain in a family photo from probably 1980.
My late wife, Carol, and I moved with our two daughters to Southern Pines, NC, in 1989. That year challenged us, but it was not the most challenging year we ever faced. That would come later.
During the summer of 1988, when I was 41 and worked in carpet product development, we sold our Greenville, SC, house and moved to Kernersville, NC, because Karastan Carpet (Eden, NC), bought Bigelow Carpet, where I worked, and closed Bigelow’s headquarters. I had to move to keep my job.
In April 1989, less than a year after moving to NC, I left Karastan and hired with JPS Carpet (later called Gulistan Carpet) in Aberdeen NC. Our daughters were 16 and 11, and our relocations messed with their lives. Plus, they lost two grandparents (my parents both died that year).
I began at JPS in April and Carol (a teacher) and the kids stayed in Kernersville to finish the school year. In early April, Carolyn McDonald, the real estate agent who sold our house to us less than a year before, got to sell it again. She called Carol the day after our house went on the market. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” Carolyn said. “The good news is a couple wants to buy your house. The bad news is they want you out, right now!”
Carol said, “We can do that.” She found a one-room apartment in a house where nursing students lived. She and our daughters shared a bathroom with a lady but made-do with close quarters for two months before joining me in Southern Pines. Carol was always a strong, can-do kind of person.
After moving to Moore County, Carol taught at West End Elementary, Aberdeen Elementary, and Hoffman Elementary School. She held students accountable, and offenders had to write her “responsibility chart.” Here is that statement Carol found in a magazine:
“Responsibility is doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, whether you feel like it or not, and without having to be told over and over to do it.”
Some former students have told her they remember well the “responsibility chart,” and a few said they teach it to their children. A soldier who’d been Carol’s student said he, when put in charge of physical training for underlings, had them repeating the “responsibility chart.” Some trainees asked, “Where you get that?” He said, “From my fifth-grade teacher in NC.” Carol spent extra hours and money on her students. She retired from teaching school in 2007, and continued more fully her ministry of writing letters of encouragement to friends and strangers. She called her letters “Envelope Hugs.” (Read some of her writings at carolecrain.blogspot.com, including her story about Envelope Hugs.)
On Dec. 4, 2012, Carol felt sick and asked me to take a day off from work. At midmorning, she said from our bathroom. “I can’t stand up,” she said. I took her hand, she sank to the floor, and I called 911. “Most people don’t make it to the hospital in your condition,” said Dr. Michael Pritchett, a pulmonologist affiliated with FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst, NC. A blood clot had moved from Carol’s leg and burst in her lungs, causing pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the lungs). Dr. Pritchett administered a “clot busting” medicine. “We don’t give this medicine to anyone unless they’d die if they didn’t get it,” he said. I watched that concoction drip-drip into Carol’s bloodstream and prayed. She responded well to the treatment, Dr. Pritchett said.
Gulistan Carpet went bankrupt, and I retired from there on Jan. 10, 2013, right after that clot damaged Carol. Our lives had changed greatly.
On Oct. 17, 2017, Carol entered FirstHealth Hospital, Pinehurst, NC, with congestive heart failure. Carol had learned that because high blood pressure in her lungs caused the right ventricle of her heart to work hard, she’d someday probably die of heart failure. After I retired, we had remained in Southern Pines because of Carol’s medical connections, but she felt, during this 2017 hospital stay, that we should move back to Greenville, SC. Our older daughter, Janelle Smith, and her husband, Terry, live in nearby Taylors, SC, part of Greenville County. I said, “We’re almost too old to move.” On Oct. 21, Sat., Carol exited the Reid Heart Center of FirstHealth. We closed on our Taylors house on Dec. 15. Mayflower moved us to Taylors on Jan. 10, 2018, and we began the most stressful year of our lives.
We sold our Southern Pines home on March 27, and Carol entered Greer Memorial Hospital on May 3. She spent May 3-25 at National Health Care rehab. We celebrated 48 years of marriage on Aug. 20, 2018. She spent Sept. 11-13, Oct. 28-31, and Nov. 3-14 in Greer Hospital. She spent Nov. 14-Dec.13 at North Greenville Hospital, LTACH (long tern acute care hospital). Carol got to be home during Christmas and New Year’s Day 2019.
10:30 p.m., Wed., Jan. 02, 2019: Carol said, “I need to go to the hospital.” An ambulance took her to Greer Hospital. One blood pressure reading showed 71/27.
Thurs., Jan. 3: Dr. Armin Meyer, Carol’s SC pulmonologist, told Carol he’d done all he could do. He recommended hospice care. Carol was “being kept alive” by medicines that raised her blood pressure while fluid was being taken from her body by diuretics. (For years, Carol also had classic lymphedema in her legs.)
Mon., Jan. 07: Dr. Meyer took Carol off all sustaining medicines, and she was transported to Hospice House of the Carolina Foothills, Landrum, SC. I drove separately; we arrived before 5:00 pm. I conferred with the admitting nurse. “We give only comfort medications here,” she said. During her hospice house stay, Carol did receive “squirts of morphine derivative” as needed for discomfort. “Don’t leave me here in this place by myself,” Carol said. “I won’t,” I said. I slept on a couch near her. At one point Carol said, “I tried so hard.” I said, “Yes, you did, but your heart is wearing out.”
Tues., Jan. 08: Our daughter, Janelle Smith, and her husband, Terry, visited. Carol’s blood pressure measured 106/70.
Wed., Jan. 09: Carol took Phenergan for gas pains at 4:00 am. Janelle and Terry returned in the afternoon. Carol took off her engagement and wedding rings and handed them to Janelle. Tears flowed, but Carol shed no tears. I think the “distancing” I’d read about was taking place inside Carol, and she was weak and tired. Carol had told me she planned to give those rings to Janelle. That night, I sat beside Carol and cried and told her how much I was going to miss her. She didn’t cry but seemed peaceful as she held my hand. I prayed for Carol and, for a while, watched her sleep.
Thurs., Jan. 10 (our 1-year anniversary of moving to Taylors): Visitors came: Donna Tidwell, Jan and Jerry Brown (from Georgia), Sherry Sturm, Connie and Don Rogers (from Pinehurst NC), Pastor Bill Montgomery (age 88), and Janelle. Carol had lapsed into sleep by nightfall. I called Janet Rice, Carol’s longtime friend. Janet talked to Carol by cellphone. Carol didn’t respond, but I think she heard Janet.
Friday, Jan. 11: Carol seemed unconscious. Sherry Sturm visited. Pastor Jerry and Jan Brown returned and at 12:10 p.m., we three sat around Carol’s bed. Jan suggested singing hymns. We sang three songs, and Jerry said, “I don’t think she’s breathing. I went for the nurse. She put her stethoscope on Carol, and after a long silence, the young nurse said, “There’s no heartbeat.” Carol had slipped out peacefully around 12:20 p.m. Janelle and Terry arrived just after Carol passed on. The nurse asked us to sit in a family room. Bob Griffith, a rep from Wood Mortuary, Greer, SC., arrived soon to transport Carol’s body.
We held Carol’s funeral service at noon, Wed., Jan. 16, 2019, at Wood Mortuary chapel, Greer, SC. Her body lies in nearby Hillcrest Memorial Gardens.
Carol sometimes sang a song she wrote that is based on St. Paul’s statement, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” Often, in my mind, I hear Carol’s voice singing that song. Waves of grief frequently hit me. In a grocery store, I saw a kind of coconut cake Carol liked. Tears came. We grew even closer as Carol depended on me during the last year of her life — the most stressful year of our lives.
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