Post 2: The First Week: One Gasp After Another

The pain was extreme.

I don't have a better word for it, and I'm not going to reach for one. The first days after Rex died were the most painful of my life.

Earlier that same day — the day he died — I had been talking with my daughter-in-law about whether my son would get into the accounting program. I told her what I had told my family many times: it always works out for us. I had years of evidence. Decades of worrying my way through hard things that resolved better than I had dared to hope. I believed it completely.

Even after the paramedics came, I said it. My son and his wife were in the room with me, and I could see in their faces that they had already accepted what was coming. I hadn't. I said: It will work out. ” It always works out for our family.

On the drive to the hospital — I had insisted on taking my own car, and my son and his wife were right behind me — I allowed myself one quiet thought. Maybe this time, the answer would look different from what I wanted it to. Maybe this time it meant something eternal.

At 3:30 in the morning, sitting in that hospital, I knew something else. I knew I was about to find out if my faith was more than words.

I had been given something in that hospital — a vision, a moment of absolute clarity — and the words I heard were these: You know this is true. You've always known. Don't let go of it now.

I held onto that with everything I had.

The support that came in those first days was immediate and extraordinary — meals twice a day, friends appearing at exactly the right moment, people from two church congregations who loved us. I will write about that separately because it deserves its own post. But even inside that cocoon of love, the pain was constant. And underneath the pain, something else was happening.

A slow and constant dawning of what my life was going to be.

I had never seriously imagined being single. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew we weren't different than anyone else — other people got cancer, other people had heart attacks. I had even had that thought, briefly, and tucked it away. Because what do you do with it? You tuck it away and keep living.

Now I was finding out what single actually meant.

Not all at once. One gasp at a time. Throughout that first week, I would be in the middle of something, and another piece of it would arrive without warning.

And I would gasp. Out loud. Every time.

The world didn't wait.

Was I still covered on his insurance? Rex's employment had covered that. The bank accounts and retirement accounts needed to be changed to only my name, and some of them needed to be transferred. My car wasn't in my name. Now it was a problem I had to solve.

I couldn't access several financial accounts because the two-factor authentication went to his work phone. Every login sent a verification code into the void.

It was July 2020. COVID had shut everything down. Offices that might have helped were closed or backed up for weeks. Every errand took three times as long. Every phone call led to another phone call.

We had never discussed a funeral. Not once in thirty-two years. Now I was choosing a casket. Choosing flowers. Rex was a practical man — he thought buying a bouquet was a waste of money. I stood in a funeral home thinking about what he would say about the thousand-dollar worth of flowers that would sit on top of his casket.

He wasn't there to ask. All week, that phrase took my breath away.

Even language stopped cooperating.

I forced myself to say the words Rex died out loud. It was excruciating — but I had to say it out loud constantly before I could believe it.

Then there was the quieter work of changing "we" to "I".

After thirty-two years, “we” wasn't just a word. It was the architecture of my life. We live on this street. Our children. Our house. Each correction felt less like grammar and more like amputation. I wasn't sure if switching to “I” meant I was moving on too fast. I only knew that “we” was no longer accurate, and saying it felt like pretending.

So I stopped pretending. One word at a time.

But there was another kind of loss.

Rex slept on the side of the bed closest to the door. When I forgot to turn off the bedroom light — as I was always last to bed — I'd ask him to get it. He was closer. He mumbled, but he always did it.

I lay awake wondering what I would do if the smoke alarm went off in the middle of the night. There was no one to handle it but me.

Who was going to take care of the lawn?

Who was going to check that the doors were locked?

Who was going to scratch my back?

Who was going to unclasp my necklace?

How was I going to warm up my feet when I got into bed?

I have taught piano for decades. Every December, every spring — sometimes pushed to August because May was impossible — I held recitals in our home. Sixty people, filling the living room and up the stairs. Rex set up the chairs. He greeted people at the door. He formatted and printed the programs. He laid out the refreshments so I could stay with my students.

After every recital, when the last family had gone, and we were cleaning up together, he would say, "Good job."

I didn't know until he was gone how much I had counted on those two words.

Who will tell me I look nice?

Who will say c'mon, we've got to leave, so I will be on time?

Who will read the books I love, just because I love them?

Who will thank me for making our house look beautiful?

Who will kiss me and hold my hand while we drive?

Who will go on long drives with me? Who will jet ski across the lake? Who will take me to dinner? Who will tell me I'm smart? Who will encourage me and not give up on me when I don't believe in myself?

The questions kept rolling.

The first week was one gasp after another. From the ten thousand ways a life is built for two.

It will never be our house again.

Every day that first week — and for many weeks after — I battled for peace. It wasn't given to me easily. It didn't arrive automatically. I fought for it every single day, and it wore me out. But it came. Every day, in ways I couldn't always predict or explain, the peace came.

That was its own kind of miracle. Because the despair was real. And the peace came anyway.

I had been told in the hospital at 3:30 in the morning.

You know this is true. Don't let go of it now.

I didn't let go.

If you are in those first days or weeks — if you are finding the gasps in places you didn't expect — I want you to know that I found them too.

The necklace. The light switch. The programs he printed. The words he said.

The faith that was harder to hold than I expected and more real than I knew.

You are not imagining how hard this is. And you are not walking it alone.

That is why I am here.