Hijacked – March 1, 2020

I hold her hand while gently talking to her. She labors through her breathing in the last hours of her life. I want her to let go, for her struggle for oxygen to be over. I watch her take her last breath. And just like that, my world changes. This last breath extinguishes our dreams. Eliminates hope. Sunsets a miracle. All the future plans for our lives together are irrelevant now. Christy dies shortly after midnight on March 1, 2020.

Four hours earlier, I climbed into the back of an ambulance arranged by hospice. They advised me she could die en route. I get to make this decision for her – for us: die in the hospital, die at home or die trying to get home. We’ve lost control over any outcome we wanted. That one always ended with a happily ever after, but it is ripped up and thrown away. So, I choose home and even this is not guaranteed to us. It feels like a small victory when the ambulance pulls into our driveway to this house we designed and built together and turned into a home. Our home.

She takes her last breath surrounded by family. It is 12:35 am. I know because I pick up my iPhone. When the screen lights up, I clearly see 12:35 am; although the official paperwork the hospice nurse fills out puts her time of death at 12:45 am. I point out her error, but she insists its correct. I know it’s not. I can be rigid when I know I am right. Now is not the time, so I drop it. At least the time recorded is after midnight, making it a new day. March 1.

We live our lives around calendar dates. Our date of birth follows us through life. This date gives us a zodiac sign, a gemstone, a flower and an annual celebration. It determines when we start school. In the 1970s it determined who was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War.

But what about the other bookend of being; our date of death. The date closing the chapter on our mortality. The date literally chiseled in stone, headstones. Headstones outlive memories, crossing over the centuries with no one left to visit and remember the person associated with the Born and Died dates carved into them. Our immediate heirs use this Died date to count the length of our absence from their lives. And when our heirs are gone, who will remember we existed? Unless we are kissed by history with a legacy, it takes three generations before we are erased from memory and completely forgotten. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

We leave the hospital on February 29. Leap day. A day that appears on our calendars once every four years. A date shoehorned in to synchronize the calendar year with the solar year. The thought that she could die on leap day crosses my mind when I climb into the ambulance with her. I don’t want her to die, that’s a given, but please not on this day. But I am well beyond controlling any of what is happening in our lives. Our lives. There is so little of it left. An ambulance ride together. A bedside vigil for an unknown amount of time. And if I could control any of this, I just don’t have the energy. Three sleep deprived days in the hospital at her bedside and I am spent after attempting to bend reality into our happily ever after. I’ve lowered my expectations. Now, I just want to get her home, alive.

March 1 by 35 minutes; 45 according to the official record immortalized on a death certificate, but the date always supersedes the time. When a loved one dies, we survivors are handed a life sentence. Remembrance. We get this and a date. March 1 is mine. I will grow old without Christy by my side, but I will take her with me as I journey into the years laying ahead, remembering her and loving her for as long as I have breath. The raw chafing of grief will lessen over time. The hole in my soul will fill with other things. I will learn how to move through life without her and redefine what it means to live happily ever after. I will be grateful each April 7 that she came into this world and mournful each March 1 when she left. March 1. A day that comes every year. My day for remembrance.

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