Changes in Life

     Changes in life happen in a flash. Did you trip and break your ankle...as a dancer? Did you break your wrist...as a tennis player? Dare I say, did you marry your beau of almost 12 years, only to have him pass away of ongoing health problems less than a month later? This last one happened to me, and I'm not always okay. A song comes on and it just hits the spot that hurts. A smell, a random memory.

    Sometimes I feel like I'm moving on too fast, like it didn't just happen in January; yet other times I feel like I'm not healing at all. I know grief and healing isn't linear, but how can I go days without crying? How am I grieving if I'm not constantly curled up in a ball in bed, and able to take care of my kids? How can I not be grieving if his urn is still sitting on my dining room table, and his portrait sitting in his comfy chair, yet I don't spend the day just staring at them? How am I able to move on with life almost like I'm not deeply affected?

    People tell me I can do it because I'm so strong. Just the same way almost eight years ago when he was first diagnosed with End Stage Kidney Disease. I was 8 months pregnant with our son when I drove him to the emergency room, and our almost three-year-old daughter stayed home with my mom. That day we went from a family practice clinic to local ER to being transferred by ambulance to a big hospital in the city. It was terrifying. It was numbing. But we made it through all the setup for him to do his dialysis treatments at home. Then we made it through moving to the city and many hospital stays and the complications that occasionally come with peritoneal dialysis. Everyone commended me for being so strong and supportive, and not having just left him and his monthly deliveries of dialysis solutions and supplies, and biweekly doctor appointments with his nephrologist team. My little family unit accommodated his treatments, and our lives literally revolved around him and his treatments.

    For a while I was the breadwinner of the family. I didn't let him work. I didn't want him to work. His last job before then he kept getting sick with the common stuff everyone gets, except his weakened body and immunity system would make it worse for him, plus he was not properly doing the dialysis treatments at the time. So, I chose to keep him home. Unfortunately, he kept getting sick, and, so more hospital stays. With each stay they would add to his list of complications and add to his list of specialists to his team.

    This April 2023 would have been twelve years together. We married December 20, 2022, and he passed January 8th, less than a month later. When I got the call at 2am I couldn't even cry, I was in such shock. My mouth was instantly extremely dry, and my stomach was in knots. I called my dad and said, "He left me, Daddy. He just left me." In his sleep-induced confusion, he asked who I lost, and I said, "Jay left me. He left us." All he could think of to say was, "Tell me what you need." I didn't even know what I needed so I said I didn't know, but that I would tell him if I needed anything. All I needed was his support.

    Then came the hard call: his mom. I called her, and by then I was crying. She answered and I told her that her son had just passed away, and can she come pick me up so we can go see him. It was the absolute most difficult call I've ever made, but it felt like she was ready for it. About 20 minutes later she and my sister-in-law pulled up and she just swept me away to the hospital. I was so numb I couldn't cry more than a slow, steady stream of tears. Neither of us said anything, we just held hands all the way to the hospital.

    We get to the ICU where he was, and the nurse saw us and took us to him and gave us all the time we needed. We sat there in silence except for my occasional sob. I kept asking myself why he didn't keep fighting for us, but I realized he had been fighting an uphill battle from the moment I took him to the ER for the last time, which had already been weeks at this point. He was essentially on chemical life support, where medications were given to him to pull the blood from his extremities (which slowly kills your extremities) to his heart and other vital organs. He was so tired; he couldn't even hold his phone to look at it. The way everything started and kept happening like dominoes falling one after the other left my head reeling. I understood most of what was happening and why, I just couldn't accept that it was happening in my life. That this wasn't a movie. That there was a real possibility of him losing all or part of each leg, but then the doctor stopped coming in because it was definitely going to happen, but then that there was no point in doing it based on his overall health. 

    The funeral was only five days later, on my mom's birthday. I felt bad that it was on her birthday, but I wanted to give us the closure we needed to start (hopefully) moving on. It was a small ceremony, with a prayer led by his mom, and then friends and family could say something about their relationship with him. At the end I said a few words, which I don't remember except that I said, "If he had an idea, it was now your idea, too." Or something like that. And it was true. As everyone was starting to leave, I went to say my last words and touch him for the very last time ever in my life. I couldn't help but let out a pained sob for him. I didn't want to let him go. I wanted more time with him. I wanted him to come home with me. I didn't want him to be buried, much less cremated, which was his choice. 

    When I went to pick up his box of ashes at the funeral home, I cried all the way home. I had already bought his urn because I wanted to have it ready immediately after he came home. It's a lovely little stainless-steel urn with a tree in the shape of a heart, two cardinals, and a poem. It sits on the dinner table because I don't want to hang his portrait and shelf up because I feel like it just makes things that much more permanent and final. And I'm just not ready for that.

    It's been 6 months since he passed away, and some days it feels like it was just yesterday, while other days it feels like it's been years. Most days it feels like I'm just waiting for him to come home from the store or a doctor's appointment. But every day I miss him immensely. Every day I wish I could have more time with him, be more patient with him, be more caring and understanding with him. There isn't a day I don't regret something about how I treated our relationship or took him for granted.

    Ultimately there are constantly changes in life, be it small or large, that change our course in so many ways. Maybe fate, maybe not, but I hope some omnipotent entity didn't put me on this planet to stay on the struggle bus most of my young adult life. That would really suck. I still believe changes in our life are something that we control, kind of like a domino effect of choice followed by consequences. What do you think? Are changes in life fate, or consequences?