Heavy Heart in Poetic Nonsense

Sunday, January 24th, 11:38pm. Time of death. This was a first for me. Sadly, I am not unaccustomed to the tragedy of death. One of my first crushes died in a motorcycle accident a week after we met in a Blockbuster parking lot, the day we were supposed to go out on our first official date. They found a sticker on his bike with my name on it. I was barely 16. Shortly after that, a high school friend passed away after stupidly swallowing 16 grams of coke when he was pulled over by the police. No one knew to help him. He went brain dead working a shit high school job. We all spent days watching life support breathe for him before it was finally over. Our high school valedictorian was killed in a 4-wheeler accident. We sang together in the choir. The following days of practice were haunting. A friend from our high school friend circle who chose to attend the same college as me passed our sophomore year. He had a heart condition no one knew about, and a lethal affinity for speed balls. I still remember riding the streets of our campus together, piled on top of each other in his busted up convertible on our first day there. One of the most heartbreaking was a fatal car accident only a week after my best friend found out her husband stepped on a bomb in Afghanistan, lost both of his legs, a few fingers, a testicle, and some short term memory function. It was the third to our BFF trio that was lost this time. She named her first-born child after him. I still miss him every day. Last year, our Irish friend who always made us laugh. We were talking about pubs and picnics one day, and the next, he was rushed off by ambulence after a heartattack and ruptured aortic aneurism. He was 45. He died an hour before we made it to the hospital. The hospital staff couldn’t tell us, as they still hadn’t talked to the family. It was an awkward stand-off of taking in obvious clues- no name on the bed number we’d been given, no hum of oxygen where he should have been behind a curtain. We left dazed, and lost.
I am no stranger of tragedy. And still I sit here lost for words…a feral animal inside my own skin. These previous deaths were sudden. I always thought a slower death of old age or illness would be preferable. There’s time to accept, to mourn, to say goodbyes. In retrospect, it’s much much worse. We spent 9 days watching my husband’s father slowly deteriorate with heart failure, watching his wife struggle beyond her means to care for him, watching the family fall apart in differing opinions of where to go from here. In the end, it was hours…hours…of anxious gasping. Morphine and anxiety medications couldn’t calm him. It was the stuff nightmares are made of. Thankfully, he calmed down by evening and was resting peacefully in his final minutes, with his favorite football team on the tele and his son by his side. But those 9 days felt like an eternity. I have a new horrified appreciation for those who deal with slow deaths. You feel like you’re dying with them. Watching my husband cry…seeing my mother-in-law struggle…watching this man of prestige and power crumble before me…it’s too much. I thought I had experienced death before. I had not.