I took a bit of a mental health break from my posts, this isn’t the easiest time of the year for me, but it’s getting easier.
On November 1, 2023, my Husband of 20 years went into cardiac arrest in his sleep, next to me in our bed.
I called 911 and performed CPR, but no one tells you what happens when you do all of the right things, and the person lives, but already went without oxygen for too long. The result is an Anoxic Brain Injury, and it’s devastating!
He lived for just a couple of days over the year. I saw glimpses of him throughout, but he didn’t understand what was happening, couldn’t do anything for himself, couldn’t speak for himself, and ultimately he was so drugged up that he was mostly not him anymore.
I fought a very long and hard battle to get him off of the antipsychotics that were making him psychotic, that turned an otherwise happy and gentle man, with a smile that lit up his whole face, and the room, into an angry man. A man who yelled and swore, who became physically abusive to the wife who he adored, when I was giving care. We couldn’t even touch him anymore.
It wasn’t until they found a tumor on his brain almost a year later, that I was able to get the other hospital to remove the drugs, and saw him for a little while, while he passed away. He was my life and my world. He was our Child’s Daddy, and he was a great Daddy.
I spent 20 years of my life keeping that man alive, until I couldn’t anymore. I loved him more than anything, I never judged him, and I ran myself ragged keeping his secrets.
It’s really hard to be a constant caregiver for someone who you love, when they refuse to help themselves. At the end of his days, I pleaded with him to look after himself better, because we were counting on him to be here for us.
I found out just recently that things were worse than I had imagined, when I finally read the texts on his phone. I know that I couldn’t have changed anything, I always did my best. It was ultimately his choice to get help, and he wouldn’t. I look at that as less of a reflection on how he felt about us, and more of a reflection of how he felt about himself.
I knew that he was in physical pain everyday, but I also knew that he never properly processed the death of his father, when he was so young. This is something that I made sure that I did properly with my own child, when she lost him. I’m not one to want to repeat cycles. I don’t think that his own mother went out of her way to bother with making sure that he was ok.
It’s been three years since his cardiac arrest, and on the 3rd of this month, it’ll be two years since he passed. I don’t think that I’ll ever forget the events of either of those nights. I watched him die twice, and it was horrific. I never thought that I could ever find a person who I could love so wholly again, but I did.
I will never forget him, he gave me so many great things to remember. I’ll always love him, because he gave me so much to love about him. I will always talk about him, because there are so many things to say.
I know that he always looks over our daughter and me, and that he’s happy that I found my person, a gentle, loving man, who looks after me and our daughter.
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