When the love of your life dies

When the love of your life dies, what do you do?

I have had some of the best days of my life in the last 5 years.  But I’ve also had some of the absolute worst fucking days of my life.

In April of 2014, I married the man of my dreams in a beautiful ceremony in front of our closest friends and family.  He was just as beautiful that day as I was.  He surprised me with a new ring and a string quartet that started playing the wedding march as my daddy walked me down the aisle.

Just as we get about a quarter of the way down, the quartet comes to a screeching halt that stopped me in my stilettos.  Then they began to play the Mission Impossible theme song. I wasn’t expecting any of it, so our guests were shocked and in awe.

I felt like a beautiful Queen who couldn’t stop laughing, and I began crying.

He wiped my tears, and I did the same for him as we said our vows to each other.  That was the most perfect day of my life.

A year later, on Friday, February 13, 2015, my father called me to tell me that my mommy had passed away in her sleep.  I was devastated.   She was my world, my guide, my friend, and my advisor.  I couldn’t believe I’d never feel her warm arms around me again.

Sunday, November 5, 2017, I received a phone call from my father again telling me that my dear, sweet, humble, loving, giving brother had passed away.  I turned to my strong, loving husband for support, and we spent days just lying in bed together crying, consoling each other in disbelief.

Three months later, in 2018, my daddy was admitted to hospice care.  His health started to deteriorate after dealing with Cancer for the second time. A few weeks later, my brother text me in the middle of the night to inform me that our father had finally slipped away.

Early Sunday morning, September 2, 2019, the love of my life got up to go to the bathroom, and he passed out hitting the carpet face first. 

Our roommate Bill and I rushed him to the ER, where he was conscious the entire time. The hospital staff rushed him to another hospital for better care. He needed additional testing. The cardiologist decided that he needed to be rushed to yet another hospital, he had kidney failure and needed emergency open-heart surgery.

I walked into his room in ICU, and he rubbed his head and hand like I always do to wake him up.  He turned his head to me and whispered with the sweetest smile on his face, “hey, baby.”  I replied, “Hey, handsome, you’ve gotta get better.  You promised me we’d go to the Bahamas”.

His beautiful diamond blue eyes rolled around in his head, and he smiled and said, “yeah, that’s right, Bahamas”.  I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I love you so much. You are the love of my life”. He whispered back, “I love you so much, baby.”

After being in surgery for close to 9 hours, the surgeon informed me that he probably wouldn’t survive. Reality slowly set in that I was about to lose my soulmate.  I started making calls to the people closest to him because I wanted them there. He survived for several hours until his remaining organs started failing.

Everyone came to me. It was up to me make the very difficult decision as to whether or not to take him off life support.

I didn’t want to.  How could I just let him go?  I had hoped and prayed for a miracle that never came. I couldn’t look at him with all of those tubes in him anymore, I just wanted his pain to be over.  But I wanted him back at the same time.

My best friend gave me something to calm me down, and I fell asleep briefly in her lap.  Jeff’s mom walked over to me and said, “Kristi, wake up sweetheart, he’s gone.”

He was gone.  The love of my life was gone.  He is now with his father, grandfather, surrogate father Mikey, my mom, dad, and brother, and a ton of his friends who passed away before him.

I just always figured that I was enough to stick around for.  In the end, I understand why I wasn’t.

I’m left to navigate this world. Alone, I have to liquidate his enormous amount of STUFF. And I have to figure out what to do without the love of my life.

I have to fight off the vultures who think they deserve more than they do.  I have to ignore the bullshit that I hear about my husband. You wouldn’t believe the lies from the assholes who think they knew him better.  I have to wake up every day without him right beside me.

So, what now?