The Pillow Top Bed and Pop’s Pillow Top Bed

By Eva Marie Ann Cagley

The Pillow Top Bed

During the first week while my late husband Bob lay in a hospital bed in the ICU at the University Hospital in Iowa City, we were camped out on coaches 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 coaches 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 saw how we had made up a bed for our self’s and those that stayed any time at all in ICU soon was 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 and 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 coaches 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 Pop’s before this but later we found out he had been there 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 coach! 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 sleep. I was so touched by the caring heart of my brother to think to do that and watching Pop’s fall to sleep it made me cry. And after that night my brother Pat made a pillow top bed for Pop’s 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 Pop’s 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 son’s say “Your 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’s on Earth the Christmas of 2004.

Pop’s Pillow Top Bed

Here’s a pillow top bed Pop’s
To lye your weary tired head
In place of a worn old coach 
That would make you say ouch! 

Two coaches made into one
When pushed together what had become
A full Size bed for now a place
To lay your weary head!

Pillows all laid in a row.
With a top sheet tucked in just so.
And a blanket tossed on top
Provides warmth for our dear Pop’s.

In the morning when you rise
It gave so much to our open eyes.
To know people there all loved you so
Even those strangers as they would come and go. 

All coming together as God’s family 
And we all held onto His Light happily
To continue with His fight to over-come
Death that had taken it’s run!

Here in this ICU waiting room!
I saw God Miracle’s in place of doom.
While You lay there within a Coach
Made into a full-size Pillow top Bed! 

A soft place where Pops could now lay his head