It’s June, 2011, I walk out of the emergency room where the
doctor just finished telling us that my husband’s brain had numerous
hemorrhaging tumors, a tumor on his spine causing the paralysis, and tumors
throughout his body not to mention the more than 100 tumors in his leg. At the time I’m sitting there beside my
husband trying to process everything we heard and not look like someone just
slammed me upside the head with a ball bat.
I could not allow him to see me crumbling; I had to be strong for him. One of my friends, Juanita who was an ER
nurse at the time, looked at me and said lets go out here for a moment. I round the corner in the ER hall and I can’t
keep it inside anymore. I broke down
like I have never broke down before in my life.
I slid down the wall to my feet.
Juanita and my friend Trish were with me holding me trying to comfort
me. It was at that moment I knew that
there would be no more research for treatments, no more hope for a cure… For the past two and a half years I clung on
to the hope that there would always be another clinical trial he could try and
we would find a cure, I just knew it. I
never allowed myself to think anything else other than he would beat this
terrible cancer. I take my husband home
and full-time hospice care from our home was initiated. I will tell you that from this moment on the
ONLY thing that kept me going was the fact that he was still alive and with
us. I prepared for his passing by
compiling photos for a memorial video; I spoke with my sister about preparations;
I spoke with my husband about his wishes, but never once did I really
comprehend what that meant. I detached
myself from the reality that my husband was dying.
For the next 30 days I’m by his side watching as he declines. The paralysis moving from his waist to his
chest. I saw him slowly lose his
breathing capacity, his kidneys slow down function, his tumors getting bigger
then busting open, and then the gangrene.
As I watch all this happen, I somehow take comfort that he is still with
me. He worries will I be okay, I assure
him I will be fine. I had to be strong
for him… It’s the night of August 2, 2011 and my husband has been in and out of
consciousness all day but now he’s not talking to me anymore and he’s not
awake. As the evening progresses it
starts, oh my god, no not the “death rattle” they told me about. Oh my god, it was awful. I climbed up in the hospital bed with him, I
held him and laid next to him for what seemed like hours. As I held him, I whispered in his ear and I
cried because I didn’t want him to suffer anymore. God, please take him, don’t let him
suffer. Then at 12:12 am August 3, 2011
Eric took his last breath and I said goodbye.
That was the worst night of my life.
That is when my worst fear became my reality. A reality I had to face now.
The first year after Eric’s passing was hell. I did everything I could not to face my
reality. I traveled as much as I could
and I went out with friends as much as I could, but deep inside of me I was
living an unimaginable hell. I began to
have feelings for a long-time friend and we started dating. I became ill and ended up hospitalized for 5
days with Acute Renal Failure and I had major surgery for multiple tumors in my
uterus. My health would never be the
same as it was, it took a huge blow. To
cope I had to bury my feelings deep inside me.
I could not truly deal with all that had happened. Yes, there would be times when it would
surface but I buried it as soon as I could.
To an outsider I probably looked happy. I could feel and heard judgment about my
assumed happiness and new relationship. I did everything I could to get through that
first year and I will tell you that there are only THREE reasons I am still
alive today and those three reasons are my daughters, Samantha & Madison
and my boyfriend at the time, Rufus. My
girls suffered greatly because they didn’t have a mom that could be there for
them like I should have been. I can’t
tell you how many ledges Rufus talked me down.
He literally carried me that year.
It was an awful year of despair and running from my reality.
I tried counseling but I left feeling worse because it dug
up everything that I had worked so hard to bury. I tried a grief support group but I was
significantly younger than anyone else so I couldn’t really relate to
them. Nothing seemed to help but burying
my feelings. It was my way of surviving.
I couldn’t take prescription medication
for depression because I was having side effects from them all so this was just
something I was going to have to get through on my own. I couldn’t turn to God. I was so angry at God. I questioned everything about God. If He didn’t heal Eric of all people then why
would He even care about me? Eric’s
faith was so strong yet he didn’t receive a miracle healing. My faith had been shattered to the core. I felt I was on my own to figure this all
out.
The second year things got a bit easier. I still continued to keep the grief
buried. That became more difficult as I
developed triggers. There were events,
conversations or even pictures that would trigger my grief and when it surfaced
it was like a flood of rushing waters.
It was difficult for me to control.
It could be as simple as someone talking about getting a miracle for a
loved one. Oh, that really dug it up for
me. Not that I would be angry if someone
got a miracle, but why didn’t we get a miracle?
Why do some receive them and others don’t? I was questioning a lot of my beliefs. My friends and family had to question why
little things would upset me so much because I was moving on with my life and I
seemed to be doing okay, but the internal hell that was brewing inside of me
was still there. All my emotions about
my loss and life over the last three years before his death were like a ticking
time bomb waiting to explode.
I knew that I couldn’t go on like this and at some point I
was going to have to deal with it all, but I just didn’t know how I was going
to do it. I needed someone to help me,
someone who had experience with helping someone who had been through a
trauma. That might sound ridiculous to
some people; that my grief was a trauma but you have to realize that for nearly
three years I watched Melanoma attack my husband. I bandaged his massive tumors and watched him
bleed out from those tumors profusely.
All that time I wasn’t truly taking in what was going on; I was merely
doing what I had to do to keep my husband alive. It’s like being alongside someone that is in
battle in a war and you are caring for them.
I suffered from flashbacks and I relived his death over and over in my
nightmares. I knew that it was going to
take someone special to help me and I was blessed to come upon a counselor that
specializes in PTSD and trauma. She was hope
for dealing with my grief.
My first session of therapy was intense. I knew it would be. I wasn’t going to hold back because I needed
to deal with everything completely. I
felt a connection to my counselor like I’ve never felt before and I left my
session that day with swollen eyes and feeling exhausted but not feeling
depressed. This time was different than
my counseling sessions in the first year of his passing. I have had many sessions over the months and
I can’t begin to tell you the healing that has taken place with me. During my sessions I continue to dig deep and
deal with the issues that lay inside of me and it is very emotional, but when I
leave I feel that it has helped. My
counselor doesn’t just sit there and listen to me and ask how I feel, she is
guiding me and giving me techniques to deal with my pain and grief. I never thought there would be hope for me to
be free of this pain and I have found it.
I thought that this was just how my new life would be. When Eric died that day a part of me died with him, my days were
darkened. It was as if I lived with sunglasses
on every day because everything seemed a little darker than before his
illness. Now I feel like I’m seeing
things much brighter. I look up and I
see the beautiful blue sky behind the cotton clouds and I hear the birds chirp
and children playing. You don’t
understand if you have never been where I’ve been that I never thought it would
be like this again.
I have finally found peace from that pain and it feels good
to live life again. My journey through
his illness and my loss has been long and difficult, but it did not defeat
me. I am finally free.
