Tuesday Morning
Tuesdays are just…Tuesdays. Until they aren’t. We got up at 5:30, like always. I made coffee for him and a cup of tea for myself. He was in the shower, like always. My tea was ready, I pressed the coffee. Put his cup and spoon by the press. I was sitting in my chair drinking my tea when he came out of the bathroom. He looked…different. Not himself. He began dressing and said “I’m lightheaded. I nearly fainted while shaving.” He had my full attention. 10 seconds later he said “something is wrong”. I asked if he thought we needed to go to the emergency room. And the one thing I have never, ever heard in my life, the one thing I never thought I would hear, came out. “I need to go right now.”
After that, everything was a blur. We raced to the local ER. I watched as they started an IV, wheeled in a crash cart, hooked him up to it. Everyone moving with an intensity and focus that both reassured and terrified. A blur of tests, repeated denials of any water or food. I remember helping him stand to give a urine sample, the weight of his body against mine, his arm cold. We were told he would be transferred “soon”. After 8 hours in the local ER the love of my life, my rock, my everything was transported by ambulance to a cardiac intensive care unit in a town 45 minutes away.
Things unfolded, collapsed, realigned. We were never given enough information to make either of us relax, even a little. The one thing that kept being repeated was “possibility of a blood clot, could cause a fatal stroke.” The three days he spent in hospital were a fever dream of profound boredom resting atop an agitation of uncertainty and anxiety. The nurses don’t know anything. The guys doing the tests know something, but they won’t tell. The one thing, the only thing we wanted to know, “will he be okay, will our lives go back to normal?” was the one thing no one could, or would, tell us.
I wanted to stay with him, but my own physical limitations and the responsibilities for our dogs, cats, and chickens meant I had to go home. I also had to sleep in an actual bed. When I walked through the door of the house that he built, with his hands, for me, it slammed into me like a physical blow. My life exploded in slow motion, a box of fragile items dropped on a hard floor - breaking, scattering, rolling out of reach under furniture. I saw the pot of coffee with his cup and spoon on the counter, untouched. His boots, waiting to be put on and laced. His mandolin where he placed it before bed, waiting to be picked up and played. Those ordinary things broke me in a way I have no words to explain. Did I eat dinner? I don’t remember. I lay in our bed and stared at the ceiling fan. Our antique clocks, the ones he learned to repair and maintain for me, relentlessly named the hours and half hours. All night. As soon as there was enough light to see I got up. Fed the dogs. Gave the one with the thyroid condition his medicine. Took the trash to the end of the driveway. Things he normally does. Then drove the 45 minutes to the hospital, all the while willing myself to be calm and not break the speed limit.
We are mortal. I am going to die. He will die. Knowing it doesn’t make it easier. Accepting it doesn’t make it easier. Only our confidence in Christ sustains us. I realize not everyone has that confidence. That some reject it utterly, and others claim it while secretly not believing a word of it. Some scoff. Some laugh. Some think we become pure energy, others think it’s just nothing. A cessation. Personally, I don’t think that way. I do not have a fear of death. I have a fear of a loss I cannot comprehend. It’s that time between the first leaving and the second following that scares me.
