Until Forever

by Luisa Cloutier

  The dispatcher came on instantly.

  “What is your emergency?”

  “Help! Hurry! My husband needs an ambulance!”

  “Okay, slow down, ma’am. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

  “My husband needs an ambulance. He’s on the floor. He’s not breathing. He needs help! Hurry.”

  The woman kept telling me to calm down and kept asking me stupid questions. I just wanted her to get off the phone so she could tell the ambulance to come.

  “Please send an ambulance!”

  “They’re already on their way. Do you know how to do CPR?” She wanted me to start doing it again.

  As I pressed on his chest, I looked up toward the ceiling and yelled, “Please, God!” Tears streamed from my eyes. “Please don’t take him away from me!”

  I stared down at Brandon. His face was moving from my thrusts on his chest, but he wasn’t waking up.

  “Don’t leave me!” I screamed at him. “Come back! Please come back!

  CHAPTER 20

  Angela and Rodolfo flew in from Italy the next day. Brandon’s mother Lora flew up from Florida. They took care of the funeral plans.

  I was a wreck. For days I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to eat but they all kept pushing me. The only strength I had came from being inside the house, his house. I treasured it as though it were Brandon. Everything I looked at I saw him, everything I touched I felt connected to him. This house meant so much to him. As did the business. And he left them to me. I wasn’t clear about much those days, but I was very clear that my mission was to preserve our home and our studio.

  Two days before the funeral, I got dressed and went downstairs. Angela had made breakfast, but I declined.

  “You have to eat, Luisa.”

  I turned to my younger brother, who was spooning sugar into his espresso. “Rodolfo, can you drive me to the studio?”

  He looked surprised by the question. He glanced at Angela.

  Angela said, “Why?”

  “I have some appointments with new clients that were scheduled a long time ago. I have to go. We can’t lose them.”

  “You can call and reschedule.”

  “No. I have to go.”

  “Luisa, this is foolish. Change them for another day. Or let someone else go.”

  I shook my head.

  “You have employees. They can meet the clients.”

  “I have to do it.”

  “I’ll go down there,” Rodolfo said, “and I’ll ask the people who work for you to take care of it. Don’t worry about it, Luisa.”

  “If you don’t take me I’m going to drive myself,” I said. “I have to do this.”

  They realized there was no point in arguing with me.

  . . . . .

  When Rodolfo and I arrived at the studio, Garren stared at me, stunned that I was there. He glanced at Rodolfo, as though to ask him why I was there.

  “Garren,” I said. “Please do me a favor.”

  “Sure, Luisa. Anything.”

  Garren was the trainer who had been with us the longest, since shortly after we had opened the studio. Brandon had hired him and had given him more and more responsibility over time. Garren couldn’t run the business, but he was the person we left in charge whenever we had to be away for a few days.

  He had just opened the studio for the morning, but there were no clients there. Most of the employees hadn’t arrived yet either.

  “I want to have a meeting with everyone when they come in,” I told him. “Can you set it up, maybe in an hour?”

  “Of course. Sure.” Garren glanced again at Rodolfo, as though he were waiting for my brother to step in and say something. Rodolfo remained silent. Garren turned back to me.

  “You don’t need to be here today, Luisa,” he said. “I mean, I can take care of things if you want to…”

  “Thank you, but if you could just set up the meeting…”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem.”

  I went to my office in the back of the studio and closed the door before Rodolfo could follow me inside. For most the next hour, with the door closed, I cried.

  . . . . .

  When I sat down in the reception area with my trainer, my eyes were dry and clear, though a bit swollen. I wasn’t sure how obvious it was that I had been crying. In front of them I kept all of my emotions inside. Though I’d known some of them for years, I had always been private when it came to my personal life. That wasn’t going to change now.

  No one said a word. I saw a few wet eyes staring back at me. I got right to the point.

  “I want all of you to know that nothing is going to change here,” I said. “The studio isn’t going to close. No one is losing your job. I will take care of everything.”

  They continued staring in silence. I saw some of the heads nod. My head wasn’t completely clear. Not everything registered. What was clear was the pain in my heart. It hurt physically, as if I’d just sprinted an entire 10K.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself so I could continue.

  “The show goes on,” I said. “We need to make Brandon proud of us, so let’s wipe our tears and do whatever it takes to be successful. For Brandon. Okay?”

  They all said okay.

  I went back to my office before anyone could come up and tell me how bad they felt for me or try to hug me. They meant well, but it wasn’t comforting. None of that helped. If they wanted to do something good, they could bring Brandon back, but since none of them could do that, since nobody could do that, I preferred they said nothing at all.

  That day and the days that followed, when I wasn’t with a new client I stayed in my office, reminding myself to be strong, to put on the mask for everyone else. I felt completely lost. I think I went to work because that was the only thing I knew how to do on autopilot. I didn’t have to think about what to do. It came naturally by now. That’s what I needed.

  Losing my mother two decades earlier had been the most traumatic thing in my life. But now, losing Brandon was so much worse. The pain was so deep it afflicted every part of my body, every part of who I was.

  . . . . .

  The one day my mask came off was the day of Brandon’s funeral. He hadn’t been Catholic, but he had gone to church with me many times. He’d come to come to love the religion, and especially Father Walsh, the pastor of the church we sometimes went to. We held the funeral there.

  It was January and snowing heavily. Clouds darkened the sky. The air was so cold that it was difficult to breathe. I wore a heavy black coat, hoping I could hide inside it, hide from what had to be done that day. Much of the funeral was a blur to me. I didn’t see the people around me. I didn’t see Father Walsh.

  I tried not to see the coffin in front of the altar, but that was the one thing that remained clear in my head throughout. A constant reminder that Brandon was dead. Brandon was inside and no longer with me. No longer would I feel his arms around me, no longer hear his voice saying “my love.” If only I could open the casket and take him out, bring him back to life. Maybe if I’d done CPR better, sooner. Maybe if I did it now. Maybe if I’d been a better person. There had to be something I could do to still have him beside me.

  I had no idea how to face the world without him, and once this funeral was over, I would be without him forever. It was a reality I could not bear.

  Rodolfo stood beside me during the funeral mass. A couple times I felt like I was going to faint, but he held me up, just as he had done in the house before we’d left for the church. When it came time for the eulogy, my legs didn’t want to move. It
took all my strength to get up from the pew, walk up onto the altar and stand at the podium.

  I took the folded paper out of my coat pocket and opened it, laying it onto the Bible. I pressed out the wrinkles and folds so I could read it better. For a few moments I couldn’t breathe or speak. I stood there, staring at the words I had written the day before. They frightened me. Not so much the words themselves, but what they meant. They meant I was saying goodbye to my husband forever.

  I peered up at the church pews, trying to look over his coffin, but my eyes couldn’t avoid it. There was Brandon. I was saying goodbye.

  “Brandon, my husband, my love,” I said. My eyes left the coffin and focused on the words I had written. “I cannot describe how much I miss you. The pain I feel. I want you to know that my life without you is empty.”

  Emotion choked my words and I had to stop for moment. I needed to get through this. I needed to say these things to him. If I cried, someone might feel sorry for me and come up to stop me. No, I needed to tell Brandon what he meant to me.

  “No one can make me feel like you do,” I said. I took a breath. “I miss your voice. Your hugs. Your kisses. I miss your phone calls every day. I would only have to think of you, think about calling you, and somehow you knew and you’d call me first.” I looked down at his coffin. “What a loved we shared,” I said. “We still do.”

  I looked over and saw my brother and sister watching me. They both had tears in their eyes. I looked down at the words I’d written. They blurred from my own tears. I wiped my eyes until the words were clear again. I continued.

  “My heart is broken, my love,” I said. “I am lost without you. You are an angel. No other man could ever replace you. You are beautiful inside and out.”

  I closed my eyes and I saw his smiling face. He was standing in our kitchen, pretending to be an announcer on television, a food program, talking about my tomato sauce. He laughed. It took all my strength not to cry out.

  “Your heart was full of love,” I said. “I have been so fortunate to have you in my life. My wonderful husband. My perfect love. I was always your princess. You understood my English when no one else could, just by looking into my eyes. You took care of me when I was sick. You gave me everything I could ever want. You are the love of my life. You will be in my heart always…until forever.”

  My mind went back to the two times we married, those days when I felt so high. The fall to the depths of that day left me not wanting to live past it.

  “I will treasure you,” I said in a whisper, “with everything I have, for the rest of my life. My great husband, my best friend…I will see you soon.”

  I took a breath. I’m not sure anyone heard my last words. It didn’t matter anyway because I knew Brandon heard.

  I read the last few words on the paper. “Forever, your wife.”

  I folded it back up, put it in my pocket and came down from the altar. Walking past his coffin was so difficult. Until I actually reached the first pew, where Rodolfo and Angela were, I didn’t think I would make it. I didn’t know it at the time, but what would be more difficult than that was when they carried his coffin away and put it in the ground, never again for me to see him.

  CHAPTER 21

  In the days following the funeral, I stayed upstairs in our bedroom most of the time and left Angela, Rodolfo and Lora alone downstairs. They would ask me repeatedly to come down, to eat, to talk to them, but I couldn’t do any of those things. I lay in bed, sleeping, praying for Brandon to come back, begging God to take me so I could be with my husband.

  One night I lay on the bathroom floor where I had found him, desperate to know what he saw when he was dying, as if somehow that was going to make me closer to him or bring him back. I started crying. I lay there, staring up at the room from the bathroom rug. Everything looked so scary and horrible from down here. The last moment of his life must have been awful for him. I cried and cried for what must have been hours, drifting in and out of sleep, dizzy from lack of food, desperately feeling suffocated with loneliness.

  Then I heard it.

  His voice whispered, “Don’t cry, my love.”

  I fell silent and I focused everything I had on listening.

  “Don’t cry,” his voice said again. “Get up.”

  And then his voice was gone, leaving me once again all alone.

  . . . . .

  Not long after the funeral, people started leaving, one by one. First Rodolfo, two days after Brandon was buried. A couple days later, Angela had to fly back to Italy too. My whole family was so far away. When she left, it was like I’d lost everyone again. Lora had to go back to Florida, too, and after she went to the airport, I found myself alone in that big house, more alone than I had ever known was possible.

  I brought Brandon’s ashes home and placed them in the living room on the fireplace mantel. He used to love being there, near the fire, relaxing, talking to me about our lives, about the things we’d been through, the things we wanted to do together in the future.

  I stepped back and just stared at the urn. Maybe I’d thought that if I brought his ashes home it would feel he was home. But it didn’t. I stood in the living room and felt surrounded by that massive, empty house. Why was I left with this big house? The size made it seem emptier. I couldn’t possibly fill this much space with only my presence. What it was filled with instead was Brandon’s absence.

  I remained downstairs near his ashes as long as I could, avoiding the bedroom, our bedroom, where he would never be again, and the bathroom that looked into it, the bathroom where I’d found him.

  . . . . .

  As the days blurred into weeks, I always dressed in black. Growing up in Italy I’d been taught that when a man dies, his wife wears only black for a full year. I knew this wasn’t the custom in America, and probably wasn’t the custom in Italy any longer, but in my heart that was what I needed to do. I owed that to Brandon.

  I managed to leave the house, but mainly only to go in to work. And only because the business that Brandon had started needed me there. I didn’t want to let him down by letting the business die. Doing the work was difficult. Inspiring clients, being upbeat for them, bringing energy to them was a torture. But I had to do it. And I needed it too. In a way, it gave me a break from the reality of my loss. If I focused on someone else’s needs, I could forget my own.

  I also needed it for income to survive. Bills arrived each week, things Brandon had always taken care of. Now I had to figure it all out and make sure everything was taken care of. The weight of everything came down on me. Mortgage, credit cards, utilities for both the house and the business, franchise fees, insurance premiums for several things, payroll, and more. They just kept coming, one after the other, never giving me any relief.

  Many times I suffered panic attacks. I was so overwhelmed by how I would survive by myself with one paycheck that I couldn’t breathe. I began to worry about running out of money. Brandon hadn’t had life insurance. We’d discussed it, but we were both so young that we decided it wasn’t necessary yet, nothing would happen. Now, without Brandon, the business was in jeopardy.

  I needed to generate income the way Brandon had. I needed to sign up new clients. I needed to project a positive, happy attitude so the customers would want to come do business with Brandon’s company. I had to do Brandon’s work and my work. The reality of the business now being mine instead of ours was daunting.

  Nights I went home and cried. I called out to him and demanded to know why he’d left me. I yelled at God for taking Brandon from me. I lay awake, trying to understand how this could have happened. Brandon was young and healthy. How could he have a heart attack and die? It made no sense. There were times when I questioned if all of this was really happening. There
were times when I felt like I was losing touch.

  I needed answers so I contacted his doctor’s office and requested his medical records. When they came, I read every page, desperate to know how someone so strong and healthy could die so young. I stared in disbelief at the report that showed an abnormal EKG. Brandon had never mentioned this. His doctor, who was also my doctor, had never mentioned it.

  His medical record also had a notation that he had been scheduled for a follow-up test, but he was a “no show.” The notes went on to say that they had called him to reschedule, left messages, but he had never called back.

  I scheduled an appointment for a physical with our doctor, not because I cared about my own health, but only because I wanted to talk to him.

  I sat in the exam room, waiting, a hundred questions spinning in my head. When he walked in, I saw that him looking sad. But more than that. Troubled.

  “How are you, Luisa?” he said, taking my hand in both of his. “Are you doing okay?”

  I had no intention of talking about me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Brandon had a problem with his heart?” I asked.

  My words hit him hard. He took a step back, almost as though he were staggering from a punch. He sat on the stool in front of me, his eyes moving to avoid mine.

  “He shouldn’t have had a heart attack,” I said. “I should have known about this.”

  “We told Brandon that we needed to do more tests. He never followed up. I don’t know the reason he didn’t do them, but we couldn’t force him.”