Advertisement In the coming weeks or months, Ed will die.
He’s not shy about talking about it.
“It’s just a story, almost like something you made up,” he said after telling me about his life — and the cancer that has come in his final years. “I hope you can make something out of it, and I hope it can do you some good.”
On Wednesday last week, I drove 80 miles south along the Mississippi River to meet the Keeneys, both 72, at their home.
Rounding a bend beyond Prairie du Chien, I saw a blue dot appear on the horizon.
A silo-style water tower had once been on the other side of the Keeney’s home. But it had gotten old, and in recent years the town built the elevated blue tower that now stands over their home on the other side.
“I don’t talk real well anymore,” Ed told me as I sat down in the living room.
The particular kind of cancer in Ed’s body is follicular non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Carolyn pulled out several sheets of loose-leaf paper with records of Ed’s experience with cancer and doctors.
The first entry is April 15, 1999.
The last, Sept. 23, 2008, reads, “No treatment — will call us.”
Ed lost more than 30 pounds this summer.
“I’ll probably just fade away,” he said. “Now the cancer is working on the blood. That’s probably what will do it.”
On a wall behind Carolyn, a family tree was surrounded by photographs of family.
The two have six children and nine grandchildren.
They met in high school, farmed for a while, then started Kinney Motors.
In retirement, Carolyn worked at Culver’s, and Ed worked as a shoe cobbler at Nelson True Value.
Their youngest daughter called as I spoke with them.
They said she’s taking it the hardest.
“I don’t want to die, believe me,” Ed said. “I wish I could outlive you. But my faith is strong enough that I feel why should we be afraid to die?”
He coughed. Carolyn looked at him.
“It’s hard,” she said. “Hopefully, things will go very peaceful.”
Ed’s cancer had gone away for five years after they first found it in 1999.
But it returned four years ago.
On Wednesday, Ed invited me to feel the lump behind his right ear.
I gently touched his skin.
“Go ahead. It won’t hurt,” he said. “That’s the cancer.”
It’s spread down his neck and into his abdomen and spleen.
I asked Ed what it is like to look outside at the fields he’s lived around all of his life, and to know that soon he would no longer see them.
“I’m really glad I can look at it,” he said. “You go look at our backyard and look over it. We’ve been to Hawaii and all over. It doesn’t look any prettier than that does.”
The two will be buried in the cemetery near St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish in Mount Hope. They purchased the gravestone, which stands there now, several years ago.
“In our 53 years (of marriage) we’ve been very very close,” Ed said. “We’ve done what we’ve wanted to do in our lives. I don’t want it to be over with, but it is, and I’ve loved it all.”
In the Keeney’s front yard, a Crimson King maple tree stands with deep red leaves.
Across the street, a sign reads “Mount Hope: Population 183.”
