When The World Changed

Life seems so solid until the death of someone you love shows how fragile it is. 

March 13, 2012, was the day that my world changed forever.  I had dealt with death before with my maternal grandmother and, paternal grandparents, family friends, but nothing could ever prepare me for the sudden death of my husband, Mike, from an accidental opioid overdose.  Mike had struggled with addiction for many years because of chronic pain, physical and emotional.  He had a period before his death when he was sober, but the addiction was stronger.

I had received a call from the doctor’s office the day before his death, asking me to pick him up. I knew he had taken something but not the extent of what was in his system.  When I arrived at the doctor’s office, she came to the check-out window and told me that he was too tired to drive.  She was more worried about liability than his health because she didn’t tell me about the lab slip that she had given him to test what was in his system.

After years of dealing with Mike’s addiction and the stress on the family, I gave him three options: go to the hospital, rehab, or a hotel.  He chose a hotel and packed a suitcase.  As we drove by the hospital, I gave him the option again, but he chose the hotel.  Unfortunately, what Mike had in his system was enough to kill him.

When neither my daughter Sarah nor I could reach him by phone the next day, I called the hotel to ask for a welfare check.  Sarah, who lived out of state, asked me to drive down to the hotel.  When I arrived, the manager was standing outside the door.  In my heart,  I already knew he was dead, but having the manager tell me I would have to wait for the police to arrive made it real.

The world, which had seemed so solid before,  was split in two: before and after.

I have never experienced such searing pain as that moment when the reality that I would never see Mike alive again hit me.  The deep ache in my chest, the unstoppable tears, and the fear of how I was supposed to live without Mike were overwhelming.  I called some friends to be with me.  I answered the police questions about Mike, asking the officer sitting next to me if I could hold his hand.  I needed something to ground me because none of this seemed real.  The fire department had two women to provide support and ask what funeral home I wanted to use.  I was fifty years old.  I had never made plans to bury my husband.  One of my friends suggested a place that she had used when her husband died of cancer.

Finally, they let me into the room to see Mike.  It looked like he had just sat on the bed, laid back, and fell to sleep. Even as I write these words nine years later, I can see him at peace as I sat on a chair next to the bed, holding his hand, sobbing, and just saying, “I’m sorry,” over and over. 

Mike’s death was the beginning of my journey through grief, which does not have five stages but is more of a spiral that lengthens with time.  You don’t get over the death of someone you love.  Instead, it becomes a part of you that you learn to live with, and over time, you learn not to fear the feelings of grief.