The Pillow Top Bed

The Pillow Top Bed

written by: Eva Marie Cagley

@EvaCagley

 

During the first week while my husband Bob lay in a hospital bed in the ICU at the University Hospital in Iowa City we were camped out on couches in a cubical that we had taken over for the family and ourselves. My brother had gotten the idea in his head we were going to be as comfortable as possible. So, one night he said I’m going to make a pillow-top bed. I laughed when he said it, but I watched as he pushed two couches together laying pillows across the top of them and taking a top sheet tucking it in around them. That was the best I had slept in a week. It worked quite well but he decided that it would work even better if we had body pillows to use. So, he and his wife Justine took a trip to K-Mart and bought body pillows.

We felt somewhat guilty using all the hospital ones up so this took care of that issue as well. Everyone else had seen how we had made up a bed for ourselves and those that stayed any time at all in ICU soon were vying for the larger cubicles to camp out in and make beds themselves. Pat called them pillow-top beds and they were. They were almost as comfortable as my bed at home. Almost but not quite!

One night I was watching Pat as he went over to this older guy’s cubical; the guy wasn’t in it at the time. I said to him, “What are you doing?” He replied, “I’m going to make Pop’s a pillow-top bed.” That’s what everyone called him. I smiled, as I watched him push the couches together and lay the pillows on them as he tucked them in with the sheet and put a blanket on top of them. Now we had never spoken to Pops before this but later we found out he had been there for over three months waiting for his wife to pass. Her kidneys had stopped functioning and she was on dialysis and it was only a matter of time.

He must have loved her so, the way he hung on during those days in ICU. We watched that night when he came back to his cubical and found a bed made instead of a couch! We watched him as he crawled up from the end of the bed and lay his head down in the middle of it curling up into a ball like a baby, he fell asleep. I was so touched by the caring heart of my brother to think to do that and watching Pops fall asleep made me cry. And after that night my brother Pat made a pillow top bed for Pops every night until his wife had gotten worse and he started spending every night by her side. When his family came, we lay there and listened and heard the sons speak amongst themselves and knew his wife had passed. And I remember feeling so worried about Pops and what he would do now and how hard it would be on him to go home to an empty house. I was relieved to hear one of his sons say “You’re coming home with me for a while Pop’s. That will give you time to spend with your grandson.” And I felt so relieved to know he would not have to go through this alone! And yet I felt so sad and so very alone at that moment in time!

God had taken one of his Angels and called her home to lay on His Big Pillow Top Bed Of Clouds in His Blazing Azure Sky!

And this is just one of my Testimonies of Faith and Love I Witnessed and Felt in ICU during God’s Miracle on Earth the Christmas of 2004.