My Husband's Dead

I sit quietly with my husband with a stillness that waits, hovering in time somewhere between past, present, and future. There are no more prayers. No more words. No more feelings.

I need to go pick up my daughter from school, I remember thinking, as though she were in elementary school waiting for me, not a college senior sleeping peacefully in her dorm dreaming of our plans for a glorious fall day at family weekend.

She needs to know, to see for herself what can’t be true. I need her to know. I need her.

So I try calling, but it’s 5:30 a.m., and she doesn’t pick up. What would I say if she did?

I have to abandon my husband and drive to her dorm.  The medical staff assure me they'll take good care of him.  How hard can that be, I wonder.  It's not like he'll be climbing on a jungle gym the minute I leave and fall and hit his head.  He can't get more dead. 

I leave to go to the college.  It's still dark.  Becloaked in my black all-weather coat looking like a well-dressed cat burglar prowling around, I find my daughter's dorm room window on the ground floor and knock on it. Her sleepy head suddenly peeps up like she used to when she was a baby instantly roused in her crib. The medieval window cranks open.

“Your father’s had a heart attack. You need to get dressed and come with me.”

I thought I told her he was dead. But maybe not.

It wasn’t until she walked into the ER and all the silent staff with averted eyes parted like the Red Sea around her that somehow she just knew. She stopped and turned to me. “He’s dead?”

“Yes, honey,” I said gently. “I told you.”

“No, you didn’t tell me he was dead!” she wailed.

To be honest, I don’t remember much of this part. Having to watch my 21-year-old daughter deal with seeing her father dead was evidently so awful I’ve blocked it from memory. All I remember is brief impressions: her big eyes going bigger, mouth contorted in horror, the awful “Noooo!” and holding her as the metal curtain rings grated open to reveal her father, now a ghastly blue gray, laid out on the gurney.

A nurse came in. “Do you know what his wishes were?”

Of course. His wishes are to live. To finish the composition he was working on for the church where he’s going to start as the new music director on Monday, All Saints Day. His wishes are to live and write and get life in order after just moving in with me two months ago and overseeing two renovation projects after two years of living apart so that our oldest could graduate from her high school when I took the new dream job. His wishes were to continue shoveling through all the marital crap that had piled up between us through the ages so that we could get things settled once and for all and have the marriage we both know is there and want to enjoy for the rest of our lives until we’re the old couple you see walking hand-in-hand on the beach—me, the dumpy old woman whom you can tell is a real character by the way the wrinkles are woven on her face under the big floppy hat and him, the old man with skinny hairy white legs stuck in sandals worn with socks. Those were his wishes. Love God and family, make music, walk with his new rescued Golden in the woods behind our house where he’d just overseen the new bathroom renovation, and rail against ignorant, unjust politicians.

“About organ donation?” she gently prodded at what must have been my blank stare.

Sure. He was always for organ donation. He didn’t like church organs taking over the worship of the church and said they should just be donated instead of diminishing the church budget. He likes the piano. See, he has the hands of a pianist. When he plays, it is as if a doorway into heaven has opened. He likes playing music with others with whatever gifts they bring at whatever level of expertise, and he always makes it work. He’s all about sharing. So yes, he is an organ donor.

We are ushered into the next empty examination room where another nurse hands us a phone to talk to the intake person for organ donation. A forty-five phone conversation ensued while my daughter and I sit in chairs on the sidelines of an empty exam room, as though we’re waiting for a hockey game to start on the icy white floor. “Were you ever in England, Scotland, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Turkey?” 

We had spent an incredible summer in Europe before the girls were born.  I don't tell her about walking Hadrian's Wall with him and praying in the sixteenth-century stone chapel we shared with sheep, bicycling through Edom, crying over Impressionist paintings, white knuckles in Roman taxi-cabs, or diving for sea urchins in the Aegean.  I simply say, “Yes, yes, no, yes, no, no.”

“Did you spend over 3 ½ months in Leichtenstein?”

“Is that possible?” I ask. We are laughing, joking, as though all is normal and my husband doesn’t lie dead in the next room with us discussing what to do with his body parts.   What is wrong with me?

They explain the process. His bones will help someone with bone cancer walk, fuse spines, repair knees, provide skin for burn victims. His eyes will look on someone else’s grandchildren. But not his.

The wall of grief's waves slams me back down to the ocean floor. It feels like the time I wrecked my bike on Good Friday when I was seven. After a sudden stop, I went over the handle bars and landed on the right side of my face in an alley that was filled with jagged pieces of gravel and broken glass. I slid across the pavement embedding tiny sharp objects in my face that my mother picked out one by one before scrubbing all clean.   I think this is a perfect metaphor for grief.

I come back up as I hang up the phone only to be hit by another wave. What if I had given him the nitro he carried in his pocket in the little brown bottle? What if I hadn’t taken half an Ambien before going to bed so I could sleep in the strange place? Would I have awakened sooner and been able to think more clearly? Could I have saved him with CPR if it had started sooner? Did I not do it right? Did he know what was happening, try to alert me, or did he “not want to wake me” and struggled alone?  Oh, God!

The nurse comes in and hands me his ring. I choke out my anguished questions. She is kind. “It only takes about 15 seconds to die of a heart attack,” she tells me. "I doubt he even woke up."

But I don’t know. The groans, the gurgling, his belly bloated, then relaxed.   No, I can’t think on this.  That way lies madness.

Shock is a blessing. A gift from God. I do not scream. I am not hysterical. I am a professional. I am the mother who has to help her children through this. So I float through. And every step of the way there are angels who tell me the next thing to do who minister to me. Here’s a good funeral home for cremation. “Sign here."  "Call him."   "The organ donation people will call later today to let you know what’s happening.”

I leave the hospital and drive through McDonalds for something to eat, thinking maybe the trembling is low blood sugar.  My daughter, whom I'll name Barbara, is numb beside me. “We will get through this,” I assure her. “We have to. He’d want us to.”

“How?” she whispers.

“I don’t know. Pray and just live, live well.”

"Lord help us."  she says.
 
"Amen."

How did this happen?

How is it that I suddenly find myself a widow at 51?   What has happened to my life? 

This blog will narrate what no one tells you about—the searing emotional pain of losing a loved-one at an early age and what it is that gets me through.  I'll try to tell it as true as my crazed mind can with a touch of verisimilitude that will no doubt be disjunct at times, for this is what my fine, well-educated mind has become.

First, there is the shock. In my case, of waking to the sound of my husband gurgling in death and thinking he was having a bad dream. Of trying to wake him and finding limp limbs. Of running to call 911 and then trying to do CPR. Of doing mouth-to-mouth and knowing somewhere in the depths of my soul that I was kissing that damn devil Death, trying to baptize him with desperate tears and rhythmic prayers. Of fixed and dilated pupils. Then a roomful of strangers. “Clear!” the awful jerk, “Push more epi.”

There’s also the confusion. Why aren’t they in a hurry to get the transport board that had been left in the ambulance? Where are my socks? Why do I feel like I’m swimming in molasses? Can I go to the hospital in my coat and PJs? Or should I get dressed? Where is his toothbrush? Why aren’t they trying to keep him warm? He gets so cold. Aren’t you supposed to cover someone who’s in trauma? Insurance card--are you kidding me?

And there’s the urgent need to do things. I must pack a bag so he’ll be ready to come home from the hospital. He’ll need pants, wallet, shirt, coat. And shoes and socks. No thank you, dear gentle policeman, I don't need a ride.  I’ll follow you to the hospital in my car because I’ll need to go pick up my daughter at the local college to which we’ve come for family weekend. She doesn’t have a car on campus now, so I’ll need to go get her. He’ll wait for me down in the parking lot to lead me to the hospital. The men leave. I get dressed.

Shock, confusion, and a sense of urgent needs to fill--all three swirl together. Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, dragging me under like the ocean waves we used to body surf before a hurricane made landfall. I was riding high and long with exhilaration on top of this magnificent force, only to have it all collapse on top of me. The ten-foot wave crashed on top of me, dragging me across the floor of the ocean until sand filled the pockets of the cut-offs I was wearing and I began to panic, clawing my way to the top, but which way? I couldn’t find the surface to swim to, just a turbulent turmoil. Then suddenly, I was shot up into air only to find more waves bearing down. That was when we knew it was time to evacuate and seek shelter from the approaching storm.

I’m in the car driving through dark residential streets. Really dark. Then I wonder if I’m following a policeman. I don’t recognize this route to the hospital. What if he’s really a serial killer preying on the vulnerable?  I watch too much TV.  See, there’s the hospital. Where do I park? Are there papers to fill out?  People greet me, standing aside when I come in, as if I'm a float in a parade.  Oh, how nice, they’re letting me go in with him. I’ll just stand over here out of the way while they fix my husband so we can go to the homecoming game later this afternoon.

Why are all these women on top of my husband? Have I wandered into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy? Here’s the handsome dr. talking to me in gentle quiet tones while sweet young interns and nurses take turns doing CPR with desperate urgency that begins to fade into student practice to keep up the show for the wife.

I glance at the clock and can’t believe almost an hour has passed. “I’m sorry,” McDreamy says. “There’s so much hypoxia (am I making this word up?) at this point that even if we could bring him back, we have no guarantee as to the quality of life.”

I nod solemnly, playing the role of the understanding loved-one, almost automatically. For I am the practical one, the one who takes care of things, the one who understands, sees all sides, weighs the options, judges what to do in accord with the common good. And I begin to see the sympathy filling their eyes.  A wave of compassion sweeps over me.

No.  I can't be that woman, the one who lost her husband too early the year both daughters are in college.  The crazy lady everyone feels sorry for but stays away from or the one everyone speaks about in hushed, understanding tones--the widow, the walking tragedy.  The damaged, pathetic one.  The one who has kissed Death. 

The room empties. The ER curtain suddenly snatches closed, but this is no “Thanatopsis” where death is like drawing a drapery around a Victorian couch and lying down to pleasant dreams. This is stark, harsh, too white, too machiney. And I am alone with . . . who is this person with the blue cast to his skin? This is not my husband. It looks like him. But it isn’t. This is his long-lost twin no one knew existed, like on that bad daytime soap we watched together in college during the days when we were Luke and Laura.  This is not my husband.  It looks like him, but it isn't.

Yet I am ever the pastor. Or I've played one on TV.  I know what to do. I have been here before, so the liturgy’s automatic. “Bless, O Lord, this child of your making, this sinner of your redeeming, this champion in Christ’s resurrection victory. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend thy servant . . .”  I kiss the forehead, still warm.

Then I start shaking. I can barely stand. Why am I sick? I have a cast-iron stomach. Nothing makes me sick except the bad flu that comes around every ten years or so.  But I got a flu shot already. 

What has happened?  The widow-maker, blockage in the left anterior descending artery, has evidently earned its name once again and left a family devastated in its wake.  And I am a widow way too early.