We were so busy living, it was easy enough to ignore all the warning signs. There were so many. Few of us really believe that death could be at our door. So many times, we have all ignored symptoms, believing they held no significance. We did just that. Boy, were we wrong. After a nine-week battle, I was left the lone survivor on a spring Wednesday between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday.
Cholangiocarcinoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in the bile ducts, ravaged my husband, VST. It was aggressive, lethal, and quick, stealing his energy, strength, resolve, and finally, his brain. In the age of COVID, in my town anyway, medical treatments were being authorized by a panel of doctors at the hospital. Each test needed approval, wasting valuable days as VST grew sicker and sicker. Being the lone caretaker and hospice attendant, I found myself nursing my husband while trying to wrap my head around the fact that we wouldn’t share another Easter.
The idea of hospice service is romantic and wonderful. The company we used employed a group of earth angels, with a few limitations. It was a wonderful place to get all kinds of helpful drugs. Morphine, Lorazepam, Haldol, and others. Marvelous place to get supplies like diapers, wipes, syringes, gloves, and swabs for dry, cracked lips. Because we were living in a remote area, actual physical help wasn’t available. In reality, we didn’t want strangers interrupting our last and most intimate hours together. So, we went through it alone. VST didn’t make it until Easter, but left me shortly before. Bereft, Deprived. Cut off. Dispossessed. Forlorn. Wanting. Stripped. I began my grieving process.
VST died on a Wednesday morning at 10:30. His death certificate states he died at 11:15. It lies. I was there, alone. I was the one who watched him take his last breath and slowly slip away, while our beloved kids were out on some errands. I assure you, it was 10:30. The sounds my body made that morning were shocking to me. Rather like those that a woman might make during the last stages of labor. Primal and shriek-ish. Raw and from a place I didn’t know existed in me. I was so glad the kids were out of the house. Even in the middle of hospice, few are ready for the moment of death. At least, I wasn’t.
In our small county, sans coroner, the Sheriff needed to pronounce VST’S time of death. Moments after his death, I phoned their office to ask if the real Sheriff would come, instead of a deputy. VST had made friends with him during our six-year stay, and it would be a huge comfort to me. He was in a meeting, but a deputy would come. But, in eight minutes, the Sheriff arrived with hugs and a listening ear. He visited VST one last time and comforted me in my very first hour of grief, for which I was so grateful.
A long list of players filled out my first day as a widow. A hospice nurse to neutralize the drugs. The Sheriff. The Deputy Sheriff. The Mortuary Assistants. The kids. The medical equipment personnel. Until finally, evening arrived. The house was quiet. The kids and I were in shock. Our bedroom, where VST had requested his hospital bed be placed only seven days before, was returned to normal without any signs of the nightmare the last week had held. Without a trace of him, of us. Just a pretty room with all the furniture put back in perfect order.
In the cold void of death, the kids left the next morning, needing to return to their lives six hours away. I was alone on the first real day of widowhood. Alone at 6,200 feet, on Mt. Davidson, suspended above Virginia City, looking out into the nothingness of my 100-mile view. The vista, once magical and romantic, was now daunting for a wife who’d been so intertwined with the other half that she knew not where he stopped and she began.
Needing an immediate life raft, I turned to the one thing that had been with me my entire life. Words. I chose three to symbolize the first month.
Food. Shelter. Clothing.
Those words would help me stay focused through Month One. For if I focused on Food. Shelter. Clothing. I wouldn’t die in the cold, starving because I had forgotten to eat and gone out to get the mail naked. I took myself in my own arms and gave prayers for the woman I lost that day. I rocked the remaining shell and held her most gently, listening to the wails and sobs late into that first night of widowhood.
These words hold my story. Everyone reading here has lived a story just as grueling, exasperating, and horrifying. As widows, we enter a wilderness that no one has really explained or mapped for us. Each person sees the landscape differently and must find a way through that is hers and hers alone. I found that at first, I kept a daily planner to jot down the simplest things I did. I made sure to list three tasks a day and complete them. My journal helps me remember how strong I was in those early days. You are just as strong.
It’s a comfort to know I didn’t starve in the nighttime cold of Virginia City, while walking hungry and naked to get the mail. It’s only by the grace of God that I didn’t, I assure you.