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Do Not Resuscitate – A Final Act of Love
“DOMA was overturned” my father texted me on June 26, 2013. On that day, the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional and that the federal government could not discriminate against married lesbian and gay couples for the purposes of determining federal benefits and protections. I immediately sent a text to my partner. “DOMA was overturned. Do you want to get hitched in a couple of weeks when we are in New York?” We lived in Florida which was one of many states that banned same sex marriages. New York recognized gay marriage. If we married in New York, our marriage would have federal recognition…
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Halfway To Who Knows Where
It is September 1, 2020. One half of a year has passed since starting this journey. 6 months. 181 days. 4,344 hours. 260,640 minutes. 15,38,400 seconds. I made it. I’m not sure what I expected to find when reaching this milestone. I just wanted to get here; to put the days of rawness behind me. And in 6 more months from now, I want to summit the peak of one year on this hijacked journey. To get through a year of firsts without her. To stand on top of 12 months widowed with a 360 degree view and see where I came from and look ahead to where I am…
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When the Band Came to Town
Courtney Walsh wrote this uplifting metaphor on death weeks after her stepmother passed away. Courtney is a junior at the University of Florida studying acting and history. As you will read, she is also a gifted writer. When the band came to town, Mrs. McKittrick was busy baking a pie. She sat near her kitchen window tugging at the dough carefully. A jar of cherry filling waited their turn on the counter, but it wasn’t time for cherries yet. On the quiet street in front of her, the band came marching by. Trumpets, cymbals, and drums thudded down the hot asphalt. But Mrs. McKittrick was busy baking a pie. When…
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Hello From Heaven
In my June 8 post, Waving Goodbye on the Way to Heaven, I wrote about the sign I asked my mother to send me weeks before she died and my experience moments after her death. In this blog post, I will share pictures from other experiences I’ve had since then and the stories that go with them. Angels and Saints In 2015, we spent part of our summer vacation in Boston. Christy and I visited a few years earlier and wanted to share the history, culture and food we discovered on that trip with our daughter, Courtney. My mother passed on the history nerd gene to me which I passed…
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Waving Goodbye on the Way to Heaven
“We should talk.” My mother says this to me from where she sits tucked into the corner of the family room’s L sharped sectional. “It won’t be much longer for me. I want to make sure you have the opportunity to say anything that shouldn’t be left unsaid?” There’s a heaviness and finality to her words. “We’ve be talking our entire lives. There’s nothing we haven’t talked about or said to each other,” I calmly insist. I need her to believe this, so that no worry remains inside of her for me. And this is mostly true except for the parts of my life I edited from her knowledge before…
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Ambushed
March 12, 2020. 12 days after. My tears are like a book tucked away on a shelf. I am content not to check them out. They are obedient and under control. Obedience. Control. I can function if I can control the waves of emotion rising up in me. I am on autopilot. Cruise control. Going through the motions. Moving through each day. Getting by. But today, this book flings itself off the shelf, spills open and demands its story told. Christy’s iPhone vibrates. I’ve watched other calls light up the home screen, usually spam calls leaving no message. Something about the numeric sequence of this call leads me to swipe…
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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…
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The Hijacker Called Covid-19
Today is her birthday. Was her birthday. Past tense. Forevermore her life was, no longer is; so past tense. She’s gone. Passed away. Dead. She died just short of her 56th birthday. Thirty-seven days ago death hijacked life’s journey I expected to take with my wife Christy and put me on another path. The one without her on it. The one all widowed spouses travel. I’ve never done this before, this widow thing, but I saw my father and others navigate life after the death of a spouse. Same path. Different journeys. I have certain expectations about what the upcoming weeks and months will be like for me. I suspect…
