I have been married once. I feel in love fast, hard and completely. I believe it is genetic. All of my maternal and paternal parents and grandparents were romantics. Hard and fast. My great-grandmother died of pneumonia before antibiotics in her early fifties and her healthy, loving husband died six weeks later. My g-g-g-g-g grand parents were married on April 7, 1777, before James marched from Amherst, Virginia, to Norfolk, Virginia to fight and defeat Lord Dumore and Leticia stayed faithfully behind on the beaten farm in Amherst. He returned, walking wounded back from Norfolk, becoming a father to five, and living a full life. He died first, she died not far behind in the early 1800's when both had been beaten down by life and the burden their small part in building a new country.
I also know a couple locally who died within minutes of each other in the E.R. The husband had been Life-Flighted from a rural home to a regional medical center. He stayed alive long enough for his wife to make the two hour drive from home in a snow storm. He died of heart-attack after being revived three times before she arrived. When he died, she was at his bedside, and collapsed of a massive coronary and never recovered. The staff stood by in absolute shock. She was ten years younger and healthy as they come.
My husband is dying slowly of complications from his service in Vietnam in 1968. You name it, he has it. He has a will with a DNR as well as I.
We have talked about letting each other go without the violent and deadly cost of life-saving efforts of modern, western medicine. No Rib-Crushing CPR, No Intubation, No Machines of Any Kind to Sustain a Life That Has Already Been Taken by God.
Both of us believe in predestination and that when it is our time, we are out of here.
He had told me several times that when he blinks SOS with his eyes (if he is able)...we have agreed that it is the signal for me to let him go, and to help him, if necessary.
We are both one hundred percent disabled by any standard, and we take care of each other very well. God has let us be healthly enough to cover each other on 'bad' days. We are never each bedridden together. One of us is always healthy enough to do simple chores, and take care of the other. It is a romantic comedy. Messy, funny, uncertain, full of song, lots of loving, and filled with trust. We just dont know what the last act wil be. We live each day with two-thirds of a script. And we have run up against the end of the second act. Where are Oscar and Hammerstein?
Being a care-giver is like being an eraser. You only have so much until the nub is gone. Mine is very low, down to the metal, he has a bit more left. Only because he became disabled first.
I found out today, that I most likely will go first, even though he has ten year on me. A routine test came back nasty. Unreal. Everything has pointed in the other direction. I haven't decided if I will fight or just go.
I will have to tell him.
I am not afraid.
I am tired.
I will blink SOS.
He will help me.
The only saving grace is who goes first, and who will be given the blessing of helping the other leave peacefully before facing this orb alone.
I trust I can hold out. Beat this Bastard Disease and let my husband leave first.
I pray that I can hold his hand while he goes, with a smile, stroking his forehead, comforting him and then letting him slip away.
And then, faithfully follow with the clinical definition of the broken-heart syndrome. For life without him will be empty, and there will be no one who will understand me or my challenges.
When a spouse decides to die, it is a good thing, for we can follow them at will. We can choose our time and place with dignity. It has always been so even in the most ancient of cultures.
Listen to your spouse and talk to each other about how you want to die.
We have, and are at peace.
It is our last act of free agency...to leave this world as we came, alone, and at peace.
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Brinna
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Comments
Next: I am saddened to hear of your test results and cannot imagine what you must be going through at this time.
In regard to your post: I noticed that Johnny Cash died just 2 months or so after June Carter, although his health had always been more frail than hers toward the end. They were deeply and profoundly connected. So I believe that this happens, perhaps more than we hear about.
However, I know many other kinds of stories, one I will tell you here. I met a woman who shared a story of how she fell in love in her fourties, meeting the great love of her life when she least expected it. He felt the same about her. They married (the first marriage for each) and were in good health at the time. A few years later, he got a very aggressive form of cancer and died soon after. She went through many, many feelings regarding this loss (including anger as they had so few years together, when she had waited so long to find this wonderful man, and of course grief, as you can imagine), and within 6 months, was herself diagnosed with breast cancer. She was sure it was her way of attempting to join him as she had been perfectly healthy up until then. For whatever reason, at this point she realized what she was "doing" (willing herself to die) and instead decided to live, and damned if that cancer did not go away. She is in good health today - has been in full remission for years.
She then proceeded to tell me the most amazing things that began to occur after that - She was / is an obviously practical woman, not given to fanciful imaginings. But she told me story after story of the many "signs" she would receive that he was still with her - Always on her birthday these unexplainable, nearly supernatural occurrances would happen, but on other occassions as well. Things that defied rational explanation (her favorite flower showing up on her birthday in an inexplicable way - the same flower he would always remember to get her while he lived). She was never one to believe absolutely in life after death, but it was clear to her that their connection lived on, transcending even his physical death - there were just too many of these unexplainable occurrances for her to deny that this was possible, if not actual.
She is open to the idea of meeting someone again, but also accepts that this may or may not occur; she has tremendous gratitude today that they had the time together they did. Sounds like you are already aware of the many blessings you and your husband have shared over the years. I hope this story offers just a little something "extra" to consider - Connections are mysterious and there is so much we do not understand about reality, time, and space, and, the deep, profound nature of TRUE and LASTING LOVE. My heart goes out to you both. - Angie
Second, your post saddens me so much. I am so sorry you are faced with this health crisis, and I find myself hoping that you and your spouse get the outcome that you want--whatever that is---rather than whatever gets imposed upon you. Choice in these matters is so important.
My grandparents were married for 64 years. He died in July. She announced, after his death, that she would never make it to the holidays. On December 12, while doctors in an emergency room watched and could do nothing, she slowed her heartbeat down to nothing and joined him. They wrote "broken hearted syndrome" on the death certificate.
I wish you peace and love and, really, I want you both to be healthy. I'm thinking of you.