SEEKING COMFORT

Family knows time is short and savors time together.

Most families gather for the holidays. But for the Walters, every day is an important gathering to spend what time they have left as a family.

We interviewed Klaus Walter, his wife, Michelle, and his 9-year-old daughter Katie on his 65th birthday. He knows he doesn't have long to live, since being diagnosed four years ago with prostate cancer.

Doctors operated, hoping to give him 15 years of life. However, the cancer spread.

He's chosen to spend his last months involved with St. Vincent's Hospice. The Northeastside organization helps terminally ill patients die comfortably at home or at the center.

For Michelle Walter, the hospice has been "a place that helps provide death with dignity . . . (The organization) helps your family deal with grief . . . (They help you) to know what to expect, how to make the patient feel as happy as he can and to keep him pain free."

Purpose of hospice

Hospice care can allow the patient to spend his or her last days at home.

"They supply a hospital bed at our house . . . They send a nurse to our house once a week to make sure he's pain free," said Michelle Walter. "We can call anytime if he's got a problem or whatever . . . If you are in the hospital and you start to die, they try to resuscitate you and everything. And in hospice they wouldn't do that.

"They just feel like your time has come, and with Klaus we don't have to worry about trying to bring him back. It is definitely his time to go, and we just leave that in God's hands."

The organization has provided so much support that Michelle and Katie want to become hospice volunteers to give back some of what they have been given and what Klaus has been given.

For Katie, much of her time is spent at home caring for her father.

"He's just like a little baby," she said. "You're baby-sitting. You really need to take good care of him and check on him every five minutes. (You have to) stay in the same room and give him what he needs . . . some water or some pills he has to take . . .

"We like to play Uno, talk, and bring back memories . . . Lately, he's been praying that he wants to go. So I've been telling him that when he needs to go don't worry about me, just go. . . . Don't stay here just because of me."

Klaus Walter's life has not been without struggles. Fighting for Germany during World War II, at age 20, he escaped from East Germany to the United States.

In dealing with his illness, the Walters have had to struggle with many emotions.

". . . There is quite a bit of anger," Klaus Walter stated. "You might ask yourselves, why me? But, yet, I cannot answer you . . . I have no idea.

"There is only one source. One idea, that is God himself. God is the one . . . God has our happiness. He knows what we need. He is the manager. He is the one who knows what is to take place."

Katie has experienced different emotions.

"It's really hard, it makes me sad. It sort of relieves me that he won't have to suffer any more, that it will be through," she said.

Suppressed feelings

Michelle Walter tries but finds masking her feelings difficult.

"I have to try to put on a happy face for Katie. I have to put on a happy face for Klaus. And that's really hard," she admitted. "That's why I don't feel my feelings because I'm suppressing them; so that I can try to make everybody feel that everything is OK.

"I think that there is only one thing that is enabling me to get through this. And that is that I truly don't believe in death . . . I believe that life as we know it right now, the physical body . . . is about to end for my husband . . .

"My husband is more than that physical body that is about to die in there. If I thought for one minute that I was going to bury my husband in a casket and put him in the ground, I would be devastated."

What the family has come to realize is how valuable time spent together as a family is.

"We pray a lot, laugh, cry a lot, and tell each other how much we'll miss each other," said Michelle Walter. "We talk for hours about the wonderful vacations that we've taken and call old friends . . . We really appreciate the small things.

"We look down the road and look to the future and know that even though we want be able to see Klaus, and we won't be able to touch him, but he will be very much present in our lives and in our hearts. And that's something that no one can ever erase. . . . I just tell him that God knows what he's going through and God hasn't forgotten him."

Love and family have become their priority.

"What matters is your friends and what is within your own heart," said Klaus. "Because, after all, you carry God in your heart, don't you? So if you are in your own heart, then you are carrying God with you at all times."

Preparing for a death

Klaus Walter's advice for preparing for loved one's death is to "prepare for it every day. Never go to bed without saying I'm sorry."

Katie wants people to remember her father as "a really good man who didn't want the cancer, he wanted to stay here . . ."

Michelle Walter wants Klaus to be remembered as having a "joyful spirit . . . (and being a) joyful, optimistic, and courageous person."

Klaus wishes people would, "take time out to smell the roses . . . I'd like to see a better world. A world where people can learn to grow up in peace and harmony."

EDITED BY: Marie Eckstein, 14; Lisa Schubert, 13