Chili Fritos

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One year ago today (12/27) my husband died.

For 3 minutes and 27 seconds.

Who knew that 3 minutes and 27 seconds could last so long…

In 3 minutes and 27 seconds I learned everything I needed to know about life.

In 3 minutes and 27 seconds I saw lives unravel. I saw hearts break. I saw families collapse. I saw chaos. I saw pain. I saw devastation. I felt loss. I felt loneliness. I felt tears of pain. I felt anger. I was confused. We were scared. We were devastated.

For 3 minutes and 27 seconds we were changed.

…and then he lived.

I knew something wasn’t right. When you live with someone for years upon years you just know when something feels different. So I called 911… and we took him in to the ER for some tests. My Ashley dropped everything and met me there.

Things you notice in the emergency room:

Very young doctor; nurse is a big burly guy that probably rides a motorcycle; lady next door won’t stop hacking up a lung; and a strange excitement for the lobby vending machine.

Ash and I shared chili flavored Fritos and watched a Navajo family check in their grandma. She clearly had some diabetes issue. The family was not the epitome of health. Funny how events become tattooed in your mind; otherwise worthless points of reference. Enough time had passed, and I had diagnosed the entire lobby at this point, so we returned to the ‘patient’.

You know when you are a kid and you think that there are monsters under your bed and even though you check every single night you know there aren’t any under there….. well, imagine if just one time you checked and there were googly eyes staring back at you….that feeling in your chest….the shock of it all…..ok, now imagine that feeling but walking down the hall to your husband’s bed in an emergency room.

Time stands still at this point… I remember every single second… I remember facial expressions… I remember faces… words… thoughts… papers….needles. She met me in the hall and said, “Are you Amy? Your husband went into cardiac arrest and we are trying to revive him. It’s been 3 minutes”…..

3 minutes!!!!!

Three minutes ago I was eating chili Fritos in the lobby commenting on a Navajo family and their diabetes issues. 3 minutes ago I was sitting with Ashley in a way too cold lobby in a hospital down the street. 3 minutes ago I was a wife with 4 kids barely middle aged. I was texting and looking at Instagram and checking Facebook. I was normal and normal was good.

One thing you will never be able to explain (and I hope you neverrrrrr can) is the feeling when they have you come in the room where a minimum of 9 doctors and nurses are working on a ‘coded’ patient. You may not know this but when a patient ‘codes’ it is all hands on deck…every single doctor and nurse have to present themselves… it’s utter chaos. As Jodi Picoult stated, “Did you ever walk through a room that's packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?”. I remember a very young security guard was standing outside my husband’s room and I remember him saying, very nonchalantly, “I’ve never seen a patient ‘code’ ”. Well join the club, Mister…. And as I stood over the man that was my husband… the man that was about to make me a widow…and a brain rapid firing a gazillion things that need to happen…I stopped and looked at the doctor and said, “You had me come in here to say goodbye, didn’t you?”. I have never been surer of something in my entire life. I KNEW my purpose. I understood with 1000% clarity why I was called in there. I could see my daughter collapsed on the floor outside. I could see a central line in my husband’s groin. I saw his head hanging off the table. I could see his eyes wide open and, as they say, “no one was home”. I saw a heart monitor with a flat line. I saw the end. And I stood there and I folded my hands and for some reason made eye contact with that security guard and said, “Pray hard!”.

I remember repeating, “please please please please please please please” over and over and over and over. Eyes closed. Hands clasped. Complete surrender…. And then 27 seconds passed and a man said, “We have a pulse but it’s a faint one”. I grabbed my husband’s head in my hands and shut his eyes for him. The nurse told me “Ma’am we aren’t concerned with his head right now”, but I was…I was… I was concerned with his head and his heart and his body and his family that was collapsed on the floor outside room 27 in the emergency room in a hospital down the street.

Funny how life sucker punches you from time to time. Little pieces of reality pie. Death never really comes at the right time, does it? So you make yourself strong because it's expected of you. You turn into the person others need you to be. And you roll up your sleeves and say “Let’s get dirty”. And you throw yourself into the moment. I like to think that December 27, 2017 was ‘so last year’, but when death knocks at your door it doesn’t matter if you answer it or not, because hellooooo tag you’re it!

It isn’t anything I have talked about. I didn’t Facebook it. I closed my circle. I let a few in. Some came in regardless and without abandon for their dear friends. I slept on a waiting room couch in a fetal position as 2018 rang in. I learned about blood. And hearts. And visiting hours. And coffee….lots of coffee. By the way, hospital cafeteria hours suck…..

But he lived. We lived. We love… and continue to love. You never really know the strength of a family until you see it break down. It is a beautiful sight to see although that sounds like the worst kind of sight there could be. Ohhhh you want to know how you did as a parent, well, throw in the death of a loved one and the pain associated with it and BINGO you get to see the fruits of your labor. UGHHHHH why does it have to be like that? Why does pain bring out the best in people? When the world falls apart, and it will from time to time, look no farther than left and right….those are your people…your family. Your pain is their pain. Like the saying goes, “We bleed together”. We're all pieces of the same ever-changing puzzle. You see, within 3 minutes and 27 seconds my ‘circle’ dropped everything, and I mean EVERYTHING and came to a hospital down the street to Room 27 on December 27^th  to watch and pray over a heart line on a monitor that held all the answers to the past, present, and future of a family collapsed on a hospital floor.

Why do I tell my story, now that a year has passed? Because life, it turns out, goes on… And the mundane activities become your focus and bills are paid and dentist appointments are missed and kids go to collage and dishes pile in the sink and you forget. You forget what happened in Room 27 on the 27^th. Then you get a call from you husband and he says, “Honey, let’s go to the casino today to celebrate my one year death anniversary”. And you realize those are words that at one point in time, when 3 minutes and 27 seconds lasted an eternity, that you never thought you would hear again. And I clasp my hands and close my eyes and quietly say to myself, “But I already won”…..