Anniversaries and Regrets

I've been thinking about writing this entry for more than a week now.  April 20th would have been our 32nd anniversary.  I think about Melinda every day, but of course there are dates on the calendar that hold more significance than others.  As a husband, the first part of the year was a minefield I had to navigate for almost 30 years.  Valentine's Day was up first, then March 10th which was Melinda's birthday, and finally our anniversary in April.  It was a gauntlet that I dreaded because I always felt like I couldn't live up to her expectations.  She wanted grand romantic gestures that didn't come naturally for me.

So I tried in my own way to show her that I loved her.  I decided at some point that the best way to do that was to make sure she was able to have whatever would make her happy.  I wanted to give her the world, which is a large part of how we ended up in soul crushing debt over the course of many years.  That one's on me, because I was our sole income and I paid the bills, so I knew realistically what we could and could not afford.  In my desire to make her happy, I actually crippled our ability to realize bigger dreams and it caused problems in our relationship down the road.  It broke my heart when I had to tell her that we couldn't afford the 25th anniversary vacation that I had promised her the year before, but we were up against the wall financially.

In the end, it was a terrible decision on my part to shoulder the burden of our finances.  I believed that I was protecting her, when in reality I was hurting our relationship.  I didn't treat her like an equal partner, but more like a protective parent.  It's unbelievably difficult to realize that I can never make it right.  If Melinda were still alive, we could go to counseling, learn from our mistakes (yes, I understand that she fell short as well), and have a stronger marriage as a result.  That isn't an option now that she's gone.  I can only hope that she can see the love in my heart, realizes that she was the most important person in my life, and is comforted by that thought.

I shared a little about our relationship to give you at least some small idea of the significance of the gauntlet I ran at the first of every year.  Melinda passed away on February 10th, 2015, just four days before Valentine's Day, before the usual ordeal would begin.  As difficult as I believed those dates to be when Melinda was alive, they were so much harder in the wake of her death.  Each one of those days was a cruel reminder of just how badly I failed her.  Particularly that first year, my mind was overrun with regrets and I had no way to apologize to her.  As time has passed and I've received counseling, I realize that we were both at fault, but I find it impossible to completely let go of those regrets.  Perhaps that's a good thing, though  Should I ever decide to be in a relationship again, it's important for me to remember past mistakes, as I don't want to repeat them.

The one constant during those difficult first few months was Melinda's mother, Jean.  I always liked Jean, but we weren't that close before Melinda passed.  I know they loved each other, but because of reasons I'll never understand, there was a certain distance between them.  During most of our marriage, Jean lived only a few minutes away, but unless it was a birthday or holiday, we didn't see her.  Based on what I know now, I believe that Jean wanted her daughter to reach out to her more often, but I also know Melinda didn't think that Jean wanted to talk to her.  When Jean did call, Melinda would remark about how short the conversation was, feeling that her mother was trying to keep the phone call as brief as possible.

But that's not the Jean I had the privilege to know over the next year.  She was always there when I needed her.  She was very supportive throughout the entire process and she deferred to me when it came to final decisions on Melinda's funeral arrangements.  She was considerate and caring, and I wish that Melinda had known the same Jean that I did.  We had dinner together almost every Wednesday night.  We also spent many weekends together cleaning out her brother Paul's house that April when cancer took him (yes, a whopping two months after Melinda's funeral).  There's so much I could tell you about Jean, but in short, she was a good friend and those are so hard to find.  That's why it was a such a blow when she passed suddenly on February 14, 2016, just one year and four days after Melinda.  I take comfort in knowing that if there's an afterlife, they are together again, but I do miss them both.

Valentine's Day will always be a little different for me now.  It's a date I will forever associate with losing both the love of my life and her mother, who I grew to love and respect over a relatively short time.  Melinda's birthday will always be a reminder that she's not here anymore.  I don't think of her as dying at 47 years old, but dying exactly one month short of 48.  I think of her age in relation to what could have been (what should have been).  Our anniversary will always be a somber reminder of what might have been.  I was proud of our longevity, especially with the current divorce rate.  I must admit that I was looking forward to celebrating our 50th.  I would have considered it a badge of honor since so few couples make it that far.  Unless I marry immediately and live to more than 100 years old, I guess I better give up on that particular dream.

Giving up on one dream isn't an ending, though.  At least, it shouldn't be.  My goal is to embrace new dreams, whatever they may be.  I love writing, and frankly I have rarely made the time to do so.  Writing may be just one of the things that becomes a more important part of my life, though.  The possibilities seem endless.  It may not be the life I had in mind two years ago, but it can be a happy and fulfilling, but different version of my life.  I'm still struggling, but beginning to see the light.  A song was released close to Melinda's passing that resonates with me still.  I can relate almost every line in the song to our marriage and her death, and I may go into detail in another entry.  The song is Black Sun by Death Cab for Cutie.  This one verse holds so much sadness and potential joy for me and it's my final thought for today.

There is an answer in a question
And there is hope within despair
And there is beauty in a failure,
And there are depths beyond compare
There is a role of a lifetime
And there's a song yet to be sung
And there's a dumpster in the driveway
Of all the plans that came undone

The Night My Life Changed Forever - Part 2

My long night had just begun.  I was in shock and it was difficult to focus on the myriad of questions that came from the EMTs, medical examiner and policemen that entered our home.  After two years, it's difficult to recall the precise order of events.  Truthfully, it was such a blur even the next day.  I do remember answering a lot of the same questions in separate interviews with at least  three different individuals, and I'm certain that two of those were policemen.  I realize that they were only doing their job.  After all, many people are caught harming or killing others on a daily basis.  I just couldn't help but feel as if I was on trial.

At one point later in the night, after answering the same questions to yet another person, I paced up and down the front sidewalk.  Suddenly I felt ill and dropped to my hands and knees on the concrete, at the mercy of dry heaves.  When I felt able to stand, I looked around to see if anyone was looking at me, and all I could think was "Would a cold blooded murderer look so pathetic?"  In the end, I didn't actually care what they thought.  I wanted to know what had happened, and enduring the seemingly endless questions was the quickest way to move the process forward.  At least, that was my hope.

At some point I realized that I needed to contact our families.  It was late, but it wasn't the middle of the night.  It was probably around midnight.  I first tried to call Melinda's mother, Jean, but no one answered, so I had to leave a voicemail.  I have no idea how I sounded, but I let her know that she needed to call me ASAP.  I can only imagine what she thought when she heard my message.

I then called my parents in Arizona.  My father answered the phone and through sobbing I tried to say those impossible words, "Melinda is dead."  I remember the sound of Dad's voice as we spoke about what was happening.  I can hear it in my head and it's still a great comfort when I think back on it.  It seems a little silly to me, as I've always known him to be a loving and caring father.  I suppose it made such an impression because that was the lowest point in my life and I simply needed that compassion so badly.  My father endured a lot in his life, including losing both brothers to suicide when they were young adults, so he knows about loss firsthand and I'm sure it broke his heart to know that I was experiencing such a loss.

I don't remember if I had a chance to talk with my mother on that first call, although I shared many conversations with both of them over the next few weeks.  My mother has always been a wonderful source of comfort and compassion in my life.  I suppose that's fairly common as women are typically seen as more nurturing than men, but I have always felt like I could tell her anything.  She's also one of the strongest women I've ever known.  Around 1999, Mom had to deal with losing William (her father), Jerry (her only sibling), and Billy (her oldest child and my brother).  I'm not sure how she was able to process it all.  In the coming year, I would have to deal with a deluge of losses, but none as heart breaking as she had endured.  

I believe I had to excuse myself from that first call to my parents because Jean was calling me back.  Telling my parents about Melinda was difficult, but I could hardly form the words as Jean asked me what was wrong.  How do you tell a parent they've lost their child?  I had lost my beloved wife, but Jean had lost her daughter.  Melinda and I never had children, so I doubt I can truly understand how that must feel.  We spoke briefly because at that point I didn't actually have much information and she lived only a few minutes away.  She and Melinda's Uncle Paul came over and we comforted each other as official business buzzed all around us.  It felt like the night was never going to end.  Eventually, someone from the medical examiner's office came and took Melinda's body from the bedroom.  It still felt like a bad dream, but the reality began to sink in as her body was wheeled out the door, never to return.

Jean was great.  She seemed stronger than I was in dealing with Melinda's loss, but Melinda usually handled herself well under pressure, which is something she must have gotten from her mother.  Even though Jean was reeling from the loss, she was determined for the longest time to stay with me to make sure I was okay.  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I convinced her to go home and get some rest and that I would try to do the same.  I went back to the bed where my wife passed hours before and I laid down.  I hugged her pillow, which still had her scent, and I cried myself to sleep.  My worst night was finally over.  Tomorrow I would start my education in dealing with death.

The Night My Life Changed Forever - Part 1

I've been told by various people, including my therapist, that keeping a journal can be very helpful in sorting out feelings.  I don't know how often I will end up posting new entries, but I have decided to write in a decidedly more public place than in the pages of my personal journal.  My hope is that what I write may be of some help to others who have had a similar experience.

A little over two years ago my wife Melinda passed away at 47 years old.  It was sudden and unexpected, and the night it happened was by far the single worst night of my life.  I don't know if it would have been easier if I had known ahead of time, say if she had been battling cancer or some other terminal illness.  In my mind, I feel that I would've had time to become accustomed to the idea of losing her.  In reality, it would have been horrible either way, but it just felt like such a gut punch, one for which I hadn't braced myself.

I had come home from work one evening around 7 pm.  Melinda was lying in the bedroom with an ice pack on her neck.  She was having another migraine.  It was nothing new, so I didn't feel like I should be worried.  She occasionally experienced them as long as I had known her, which was more than 30 years.  We met and started dating when she was 15 and I recall her dealing with them even then.  I had laid down on the bed next to her to see how she was doing and I stayed there for a while.  She asked me if I had eaten dinner and I told her I hadn't.  She told me I should go eat something and just let her rest in the dark and quiet room.

So I left her lying on the bed, not realizing those would be the last words I would ever share with her.  I ate dinner and since I couldn't watch any of the TV shows we enjoy together, I started playing GTA V on my XBOX.  I was nearly done with the game and I was just cleaning up a few collectibles and achievements.  I don't recall how many times I went to check on Melinda, although I know it was several.  I would look in and see her sleeping with Indigo (one of our cats) under the blanket at her feet.

Sometime between 10:30 and 11 pm, I had just experienced a moment of great satisfaction as I received the achievement for 100% completion of the game.  Then I noticed that Indigo had come into the living room. Thinking she was possibly awake and hopefully feeling better, I decided to check on Melinda again and offer to get her something to eat.  I crawled up on the bed as I had 4 hours before.  I reached up to shake her lightly by the arm and recoiled as her skin was cold.  I had an icy feeling in my chest.  I knew what that meant, even though I had never dealt with a dead body before.

I was frantic and I didn't know what to do at first.  Melinda would have known.  She was always great in a crisis.  I was sobbing and calling her name as I held her.  I then called 911 in case there was anything that could be done, although in my heart I knew she had been gone for a while.  Her legs appeared bruised all over, which I assumed meant that blood had been pooling for a while.  Her blood was no longer circulating and God only knew how long ago her heart had stopped beating.

So through tears and incoherent wailing, I spoke with the 911 operator, listening to her instructions.  She had me roll Melinda over and perform CPR on her.  I told her that she was dead, but the operator encouraged me to do chest compressions and to call them out loud.  Two years have passed and I can still hear my shaking voice call out those numbers.  Thankfully, I didn't have to do that for long as the EMTs were knocking at the front door.  I let them in and they rushed into the back bedroom to her aid.  I don't recall how long they were in the room, but it felt like only a minute or so.  One of them then confirmed what I had already known.  She was gone and had been for a while.

The most important person in my life was ripped away from me.  We hadn't even considered creating wills because we were supposed to have so much more time together.  I was lost and adrift on a sea of emotions.   I had to deal with police questioning and I had relatives to notify. My night was just getting started.