The Long Goodbye—Ruth 1:1-5
Based on the first five verse in Ruth chapter 1, I believe Naomi may have experienced a type of long goodbye. Her children were born during a time of famine. Their very names speak to this— Mahlon means sickness and Chilion means wasting away. The Bible doesn’t say, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that she had lost other children before moving to Moab.
I experienced my own type of long goodbye with my husband who was terminally ill for fourteen years before he left this world.
I joke (because sometimes that’s all you can do) and say that Reese’s Miniatures is what killed him. He would buy the family size bag and wait for the kids to go to bed to eat them. The only one he shared them with was his chihuahua, Tiny. (Yes, I know you’re not supposed to feed a dog chocolate, but try telling that to Tommy and Tiny.)
The man never went to the doctor, so his diabetes went untreated. That disease eventually led to rapid weight loss, which led to cirrhosis and a liver transplant, which led to kidney failure and dialysis. Throw in two life threatening reaction to prescription drug allergies, illnesses brought on by his low immunity, and… well, it’s a long list.
It all equaled out to fourteen years of him being sick and wondering almost every day if he was going to make it. Fourteen years of me being a caregiver. By the end, we were both beyond exhausted.
Yet… when it happened, it was still unexpected.
He had a good Easter that year. We went to see his family, came home, did dialysis without a hitch, and went to bed. He woke me up in the middle of the night with a persistent cough. I gave him cough medicine. He died the next morning. I believe it was a blood clot in his lung, but the coroner said they didn’t know what happened, so they put covid down as the cause even though he didn’t have covid. We’ve all heard the stories before.
That was over three years ago. Widowhood has been one of the hardest things I’ve gone through, and I’ve been through a lot. But God has sustained me. His love and provision never fails.
Feel free to share your own story. Sharing lets others know that they’re not alone, that someone else knows what they are going through. You’d be surprised how much that can help.
I wrote a study guide on the book of Ruth. You can find the link here-https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN6B7YP1 This blog series will follow along with each section of the book. I plan to post every Monday. If you’d like a reminder, please sign up to receive notification.
Next post- https://andreaboyd11.com/2025/09/22/blessed-friendships-ruth-16-9/
Andrea Boyd 