Odyssey of Ashes: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go

Part I

CHAPTER 1

This is the day

you realize

how easily the thread

is broken

between this world

and the next …

—DAVID WHYTE

It’s 3:30 a.m. My husband wakes up with back pain. Lying next to him in bed, barely conscious and groggy, I rub the spot; it feels tight, but after years of back problems, that’s nothing unusual.

Unable to lie still, he gets up to go into the next room to stretch, and I anxiously trail behind and stand, hovering, like he always hates me to do.

Can I do anything?

Get the foam roller; that might help.

I hurry into the bedroom, grab our large foam roller, and bring it to him. I stand over him, watching as he adjusts himself on it, trying to work through the pain in his back, hoping something will pop and release the suffering. Nothing seems to be helping, but my job is to reassure him.

He asks for some pain medication he was given, but never took, for a surgery earlier this year. He doesn’t like pain meds, doesn’t like how they make him feel; later, I will realize this is the moment I should have known how wrong things were, but for now I simply grab them from the medicine cabinet and hurriedly read the instructions. You can take two.

No, he only wants one. Well, I think to myself, maybe it’s not too bad then.

I’m watching, and I can see the stretching isn’t helping. He’s lying on top of the roller and moving slowly, taking different positions, trying to unlock the tension, his breath labored. My heart begins to pound as I watch him struggle. He doesn’t usually spend this much time working with the roller. He doesn’t spend this amount of time out of bed trying to deal with pain. Mostly, he doesn’t let on how much pain he’s experiencing.

There’s a cold feeling in my body as I watch him struggle, but I force myself to stay optimistic. We’ve been here before, I remind myself. Again, later I’ll understand that I should have known this time was different, but you only see these things in retrospect. The intensity of my own anxiety, how concerned I felt when he asked for drugs—these were clues that this time wasn’t the same as other times before. I should have known.

I’m woozy and still hovering when he tells me to return to bed to get some sleep. He’s always telling me to get some sleep. He’s the only person who can say this to me without my finding it annoying. In fact, he’s the only person I have ever known who can calm my restlessness. Ironic, considering his impatient nature. He’ll be pissed off if I stay here, anxiously monitoring his every breath.

You’re hovering, he must be thinking. It won’t help if I stay and monitor him. It will only make him tense. Everything is already too uneasy, too uncomfortable. I can’t help him. I’ll upset him even more if I linger over him with my nervous watchfulness.

Stop it.

Let me know if you need anything, I say.

I love you, we tell each other. We’ve had an agreement since the time of my cancer that these should always be the last words we speak before parting, just in case it’s the last contact we ever have. We say I love you to each other.

I leave him lying on the floor, stretching, and dutifully pad back to bed. He’ll be okay. He’s not clammy. He’s not nauseous. He’s not short of breath. He’ll be fine, I tell myself.

But moments after I lie down, I suddenly feel panicky. I am clammy. I am nauseous. I am short of breath. Maybe we have food poisoning? What is happening?

As I attempt to get comfortable in bed, a terrible wind begins to howl all around me. It’s a sound unlike any noise I’ve ever heard, reverberating from the other room. It’s like the winds of a tornado ripping through our home. Then a procession of noises: a deeply guttural gasp for air, a roaring snort combined with the loudest snore I have ever heard. These horrifying sounds are accompanied by the sound of a rushing, watery release, a torrent of some kind of liquid. Is that a waterfall? Has the ceiling collapsed?

I levitate from the bed and run into the family room, where I find John sitting up on the couch in his usual place, a well-worn seat in front of the television he sits in so often that the cushions are molded to fit his body. It annoys the shit out of me how much time he spends there, actually, because I want him to be more active, get some exercise, move more. I can pretty much always count on finding him there for large parts of the day—a fact that is both aggravating and comforting.

A desolate quiet fills the space. It feels like the air’s been sucked out of the room. I sit beside him, next to him. Is he asleep? Don’t wake him, I think, let him rest. But then I worry. Has he passed out from the medication? Is that okay? In the darkness, I sit with him, and when I finally touch him …

He is too still. That’s when I notice that he’s peed all over himself, the rug. Oh my God, he’s not breathing. I put my hand under his nose; there is no air coming out. He is not breathing in. I place my hand on his chest, his belly, and find no movement. Oh no. Oh my God. No breath, no sound … no response.

Before I know what I’m doing I am pleading for help on the phone to 911. How did I get to the phone? How did I dial 911?

My husband is not breathing! I shout at the woman on the line. You have to send someone.

Can you move him, ma’am?

No, I cannot move him.

Is he breathing?

No, he is not breathing. What the fuck! Send the paramedics! I yell to the inane, disembodied female voice on the other end of the line.

Is he on hospice?

No. Please, please, they need to get here.

She keeps asking me if he is on hospice, whether I can move him, and whether he’s on hospice, over and over again. No, I cannot move him, and no no no, he is not on hospice. She’s actually annoyed with me. She needs to ask these questions, she says. I don’t care what she needs, some stupid fucking protocol while time is passing or has stopped. I don’t know which is real. And then I am shaking and screaming, Get the fucking paramedics here now!

When do the paramedics arrive? Do they get there in the requisite five minutes needed to save a life? Did they rush here? I don’t know. I didn’t hear any sirens.

A big man is at my door. He won’t come in because he’s afraid of my old, crippled dog. It all passes in a fog—the paramedic’s arrival, his insistence that my dog, who can barely stand up without assistance, be shut in another room before they enter the house. Five minutes is passing. Five minutes is surely over. Get to my husband! This big man is afraid of my dog, who is nowhere near the room where John is and where all of this has transpired.

They’re rushing through the house now, springing into action. There’s a fireman. He is handsome, like most firemen. How bizarre to notice this right now.

Sir, sir, can you hear me? The paramedic asks John.

Sir, can you hear me?

The big man’s enormous, chunky fingers are on John’s neck, and then his face freezes. Suddenly, John is on the floor. They are ripping off his T-shirt, leaving him naked. There are instruments scattered all around him. I see them bring out a defibrillator; they’re attaching those adhesive defibrillator pads to his chest, trying to make an electrical current pass through to his heart, trying to get a pulse, trying to find a breath. Set. Set. Set. They’re trying to get an electrical current into him, trying to restart his heart. They’re placing a plastic tube down his throat … intubating him.

Clear. Clear.

Men are scrambling around John. I stare wildly at the scene before me. I should go to the next room, the big man says. I am frozen in horror. I cannot move.

Suddenly, I’m in the kitchen. How did I get here? Where is my dog? A woman is with me. She is young, quiet, but she seems kind. Her eyes are big and dark; she wears a hijab. What is it like for her to see a man lying naked on the floor? Why am I thinking this during this trauma?

She is saying something to me: Are you all right?

No, no, I am not all right.

The big man comes into the kitchen and looms over me. I need to prepare you. We cannot find a pulse. With that, he turns and strides in his heavy boots back to what is quickly becoming a death chamber in my family room.

I cannot stop shaking; my entire body rolls with spasms. My teeth are rattling against one another. The woman looks sympathetic, but she doesn’t speak. I am shaking and gasping for air. She is silent. There is horrible absence of breath all around me. I feel carried along by a wind that is spewing from the mouth of a devil.

Oh no, the big man is coming back down the hall. It’s too soon; he should not be leaving his post with John. His boots pound the floor. I feel an earthquake coming. No! No! Go back to John. Don’t come here. Go away; you’re not welcome here. He is standing over me. He is telling me that my husband is dead. There’s nothing they could have done. It happened in less than five minutes.

I should have known. I should have known. The connection between John and me is strongly woven, our bond a somatic attachment. I know him too well not to have known. Not to have trusted my instincts. But could I have saved him? Surely, I could have saved him.

I run to the family room. The other paramedics are still here. I fall to the floor and hold John. I hear wailing from some distant place, a guttural cry I do not recognize as my own voice. No. Oh God. No.

I’m sitting at my dining room table. How did I get here? The handsome fireman is talking to me, asking me questions. I’m lost in a foreign land, and I do not speak the language. I cannot read the signs. Someone says something about an autopsy.

Do you want an autopsy?

What?

It really isn’t necessary; there’s been no crime.

What? What is he asking me? No, no autopsy. Why?

Then I’m signing something. How many times have we all heard that we should always read a document before we sign it? But I cannot see the writing on the form. I don’t know what I’m signing. It must be a document of death. There is no warranty involved. The fireman is kind and protects me from the big paramedic, who is asking me things I cannot hear. Where is the woman? Has she silently floated away? When did they all leave?

A young policeman is here. When did he arrive? He is caring and concerned. He asks me who can come to be with me. I don’t know. I can’t say. I don’t know who can come. Who will come to be with me? What am I going to do? I run back to the family room and get back onto the floor with John. I’m a madwoman on the