I used to have a handle on life...but it broke

Original date 4 April 2011

Becoming a widow shortly after my 32nd birthday was not on my list of things to do.  I had a great life...a husband who I adored, a good job, good friends, a great family.  My life was in Technicolor.  I was happy.  I thought nothing could ever go wrong.

Well, it went all wrong...about as wrong as it can go.  My husband became ill...slowly creeping up on him and it stole his life...and mine.

That last week we had his usual visits to all his doctors.  No one was expecting that he wouldn't make it through the week.  His disease was playing hell with his body, but he was still up and moving, however slowly.  We went to the City that Saturday...we walked all over and ate a cheese steak.  I took pictures, and he signed the Constitution.  It was a good day.

By the following weekend, he could barely stand, barely walk, barely talk.  We waltzed to and from the bathroom.  He shuffled...I supported.  Sunday had me a bit worried, more so than usual.  Something was different.  By Tuesday, I knew we had reached the end of this journey.  This was it.  This is what we planned for...this final moment, this goodbye.

We called for the hospice ambulance and they took him to the hospice center.  I slept on the chair beside his bed.   I knew when he left me.

A life that did not seem real to me sudden;y was.  This wasn't a scene from a movie.  This was the real deal.  It was 4 AM.

He died at 11:53 PM according to the nurse.  It was his sister's birthday.  I like to think of it as Brian finding peace, not death, on his sister's birthday.  He struggled there at the end, fighting desperately to hang on to this life, not ready to move from this world to the next.  He was in pain, his body slowly shutting down.  He was cold as his blood stopped pumping to his limbs and his heart beat frantically faster as it tried to keep him alive.  His gift to his sister on her birthday was the peace he found as he let go.

Brian was just as handsome in death as he was in life.  I said my goodbye.  I bent to give him one last kiss.  I knew he went exactly as he would have wanted...before his illness controlled his life.

I never thought I would be alone, but in those quiet moments on a late fall night in October, in the skip of a heartbeat, my world changed forever.