The old brown coat

It was 7:30 a.m. on a Friday morning when the woman walked into my in-laws' garage.

The bonnet on her head and her long, plain-looking dress let observers know she was a member of the plain folk. She might have been Mennonite, or a sub-sect of the Brethren In Christ or another religious order with roots in the Anabaptists.

But she arrived in a car she drove, so she was not Amish.

Regardless, she wandered the tables set up with our family's brick-a-brack and clothing and toys. We decided to put most of the yard sale items inside the three-car garage because rain was predicted.

She made it to the last table, then stopped.

She picked up my old brown coat.

I bought it at Wal-Mart or Meijer or some similar store while I was living in Michigan, circa 2004. I needed a warm coat to withstand the frozen tundra, and this coat — a Carhartt knockoff — fit the bill.

It was warm and rugged. It looked more like the kind of coat you'd see a farmer wear. The brown was the color of milk chocolate, and the fabric was like canvas, but softer.

As time wore on, that coat and I went on many an assignment together. Fires. Car crashes. Standoffs. It did the job as I hustled to and from my car in the biting bluster blowing off Lake Huron.

I continued to wear it when I moved back to Pennsylvania in 2005, but stopped around 2008 because I was gifted a new winter coat that did a better job of protecting my neck (I had to wear a scarf with that old brown coat).

The coat then hung in a closet. Or in the basement. Or in the laundry room. It depended on where I was living.

I wanted to give it away to Coats for Kids, but for one reason or another, I always missed the collection.

Finally, as we prepared for the yard sale, I said that now was the time to get rid of the coat. I put a tag that read "$5" on it, but I would have taken less. I just wanted it to go to someone who could use it.

So I felt happy that the plain-dressed woman was eyeing it. She seemed like the type who would be the wife of one of Franklin County's many hardworking farmers. Maybe she thought that coat would work well for her husband, or son, who had to get up on very chilly mornings to tend to the dairy cows or make sure the tractor was running.

I had walked out of the garage for a minute, but walked back in just in time to see the woman handing a $5 bill to my father-in-law.

She handed over the coat hanger and said, "Thank you." Then she walked off quickly.

I wanted to tell her that I was glad it was going to a good home, or to wish the new wearer well for me.

Instead, I just smiled, then turned back to arranging items for sale on the table.

'Prepare yourself'

Bernard and Marie Deinlein's children: David, Helen, Bernie and Joan in 2014.

It had been almost two years since I had seen my cousin, Sue.

As I walked onto the deck of my aunt and uncle's cabin in the mountains outside Berkeley Springs, W.Va., I gave her a hug.

"Prepare yourself," she whispered in my ear. "Prepare yourself."

I knew going to see Aunt Joan would be hard.

Two weeks earlier, I'd learned that my father's oldest sister was in the intensive care unit with pneumonia. After being on a ventilator and a cocktail of drugs, one bodily system after another was failing her.

"When they'd correct one problem, it would cause another," said my cousin, Kathy, Sue's sister. "The doctor said that every day, there was a new life-threatening problem they'd have to correct."

Aunt Joan was independent. She didn't like the fact that my Uncle Carle had to help her move about their home after she suffered a stroke a few years ago. There also were several falls and broken bones, limiting her mobility further.

But that independence is what made Joan one of my favorite relatives. I always looked forward to seeing her. She was full of stories and jokes and laughter. And she loved to hear good stories and jokes and laughter, too.

Much of her time was spent in the garden, finding different ways to grow vegetables and to keep the critters out. At Christmas each year, once you turned 21, you no longer received a card with money. You earned one of her black walnut cakes, made with nuts grown at the cabin.

Even she referred to them as "door stops," but we discovered their slices made good French toast.

She'd share deep conversations on philosophical topics, including but not limited to spirituality and what happens to the soul when it leaves the body.

She found peace in nature and joy in the garden.

It wasn't a surprise to me when Kathy said Aunt Joan didn't want to be kept alive by machinery. It would be OK for a little while, but if it became obvious that things weren't improving, she wanted to be taken off.

Meanwhile, Aunt Joan continued to tell anyone who would listen: "I want to go home. I want to go home."

Kathy told me how she explained to her mother that she couldn't go home because she was sick. Finally, at one point, Joan appeared to understand.

"I told her, 'You can't go home because Dad can't take care of you there,'" Kathy said.

She went from feisty to being calm and resigned.

"The fight just went out of her," my cousin said.

When it became clear there was nothing more medical science could do for her — not without a tracheotomy, feeding tube and dialysis — Kathy, Sue and Uncle Carle made arrangements to bring Aunt Joan home. Her bed faced the sliding glass doors, looking out onto 17 acres of West Virginia wilderness.

As I walked through the screen door into what had been her home office, there was my aunt, her eyes half open, her mouth agape as she struggled to breathe, an oxygen tube in her nose.

Kathy, Sue and Uncle Carle said that, sometimes, Aunt Joan's eyes would flicker when you'd speak to her. There'd be a brief moment of what seemed like recognition.

But then it was gone.

I leaned in close to her.

"Hi, Aunt Joan," I said. "How are you doing?"

As soon as I said that, I realized how dumb it was to say.

I sat in the rocker next to her bed, patted her hand and talked with the family. They said how it seemed to them to have taken a long time for things to come to this, but really, it had only been two weeks.

Too many long days.

Shortly before I had to leave for work, my mom, dad and youngest brother, Stephen, arrived.

I knew this was a hard time for Dad, who was the baby of the family. He was more than a decade younger than Aunt Joan. Her son, my cousin, Carle, who died of cancer more than 20 years ago, was not much younger than Dad.

Joan was closest to Dad emotionally out of all the siblings. Put the two of them together, it was a party.

So when he walked in and sat down next to his dying sister, he looked ashen.

Despite Sue's advice, that was the part for which I was not prepared.

I had only ever seen my father cry twice in my life: When his dog died and when the Colts left Baltimore. Both happened when I was 5.

On that Saturday before Mother's Day 2016, I saw the third time.

And so I had to leave for work. I shook hands and gave hugs to the family.

Then I leaned in to Aunt Joan.

"Hey Aunt Joan," I said, touching her shoulder. "I have to leave.

"I will see you later."

Her eyes flickered.

"I love you," I said, then kissed her forehead.

It was in that moment that I realized it was the first — and last — time I had ever told her that I loved her.

We German English Bohunks aren't known for our warmth, Dad once told me.

I've discovered we're also not always the brightest, particularly when it comes to family relationships.

I said goodbye to everyone again and left.

Aunt Joan died the next morning. Dad called to tell me.

"She didn't exactly have a strong faith in God," he said, his voice low and gravelly, "but she was a good lady. And that's really what matters most in this world."

Rest easy, Aunt Joan. I think you prepared yourself well for whatever comes when the soul leaves the body.