Dealing with Death: Part II

We had known for months that she was dying. In fact, she had been telling MQ for over a year that she felt like she was dying. I guess if one were to get technical about it, we all feel like we are dying because that’s the largest part of living. But we have known since March or April that she was dying for sure.

In her quest to lose weight over the years, she had had two gastric bypass surgeries with the second one being a lot more “radical”, as the doctor put it, than the first. Over the years, her body didn’t receive the nutrition it needed to survive. The long term effects were her liver, and other organs, started shutting down. In fact, her liver shutdown had progressed so far by the time it was caught it was determined that a transplant would do her no good. It wouldn’t help because her other body parts had suffered so much damage that they would continue to shutdown regardless if she had a new liver or not. So she was told to basically go home and get her affairs in order. 1-2 years, they said.

54 days ago, after a brief stay in the hospital (I can’t remember the reason), she was sent home to die thinking she had 7-10 days left. 54 days later, on June 12th, 2007 at 3:38 pm, she passed peacefully in her sleep. Her heart had kept her going long after she should have died. She was wrapped in a robe that her mother had made her before SHE died 14 years ago. After being wrapped in that robe, a calm and peaceful smile came over her face, a fitting end to an otherwise un-necessary (depending on whom you ask) bout of suffering. She was home now. She was with her mother, where she had wanted to be all along.

I was in a meeting when MQ called. I ignored the call because she had always told me that if it were an emergency she would call Martha and have her come get me. When she called right back, I knew what the call was. My fears were confirmed when I answered to a hurting, sobbing wife whom I have adored forever it seems. My entire being went out to MQ because she had lost her best friend in the whole world.

MQ had spent time with her friend every single day since she arrived home from the hospital. To say that they were close is a grave understatement. I can’t even imagine the pain and the grief that MQ was going through. All I know was that I wanted to be there and hold her, and reassure her that I was here for her. I left work to show her just that.

The traffic down 17 was unusually light for that time of the day. But the drive to “the house” was long. I turned off the radio to drive in peace. My mind wondered all over the place, yet settled where it usually does: to a Sunday afternoon 20 years ago in November when I found my first sand dollar at Virginia Beach. I promptly mailed it to my yet-to-be-born daughter, Rebecca. I miss her, yet have never seen her………………

I pulled up to the house and there were many cars. I parked at the end of the line of cars, naturally, and walked through the yard.

As I walked under the willow tree, I saw her: MQ. She was hurting, but she was as beautiful as the afternoon sun. She didn’t see me until I was past the tree. I swear, it was the most emotional yet romantic “scene” I have ever experienced.

When she saw me, she stood there in disbelief with her hands over her tear stained cheeks. She started to cry and opened her arms to me in a way she has never done. I never took my eyes off of her as I walked to her and into her arms. We fell into each other and I held her tightly as she cried, sobbed, in grief. It literally broke my heart to see her that way, and I cried too. I held her and held her, relishing how something as tragic as this loss was slowly pulling us closer to where we were during that “first week.”

I then had an epiphany: everything we had been working toward and struggling through and laughing at and crying over was now non-essential. We had crossed that bridge a lot of couples never get to, the bridge of acceptance and understanding of exactly what we had. It was then, in those few seconds, when our love was sealed and our relationship was now cemented in our mutual grief over our friend and in our undying need for each other. I need her in my life…………….she IS my life.

I paid my condolences to the daughter and to the husband. I looked at our friend and I remembered exactly why I hadn’t been going up there to see her through this ordeal: I wanted to remember her as the person who went with us to Nags Head last year, not as the discolored, long suffering, pruned up person I saw. “It wasn’t her” I have to keep reminding myself.

After leaving, my thoughts turned to disbelief that she was gone, and I became sad. Not because of the loss, but because the world that she was such a part of for 49 years was moving forward. It didn’t care that we were all grieving our loss. It didn’t care that her husband is a widower at 50, or that she will never get to fully experience the life in store for her 16 year old daughter. And that’s sad.

We live our lives often thinking we are more than what we are, or we live it unsatisfied with our blessings, always wanting and asking for more than we really need. We fall into this false sense of security thinking the world will be there for us, and care for us, and will help us through our trials and tribulations. We don’t see, feel, or experience the world for what it really is until we have lost someone we loved. For we can’t understand why the world doesn’t love the way we love. We can’t understand why people still go to work and children still go to school when we are imprisoned by a seemingly overbearing grief.

And we often become cynical to the world that feeds us, not ever really understanding how it moves forward when we are at a self-imposed standstill. That’s what’s hard now. The acceptance of death has come. But non-understanding has reared its ugly head as well: How can one be allowed to suffer so long? How come we are never really prepared, even when we have had time to prepare? How come…………………….

So here it is 11:22, some 32 hours after she died. I am downstairs, alone with the cat, while MQ rests peacefully with a suddenly sick FUTURE (son, for those of you who don’t follow this blog). I have once again tapped my bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and am contemplating yet another, trying to find a way to end this diatribe. But maybe, just maybe, I should put away my inkling to try to write the All-American ending and let this end like life ends: suddenly, with absolutely no understanding of what just happened.