Confessions of a Mediocre Widow

by Catherine Tidd

  When they finally walked into Brad’s room, I waited for a moment to see how they were going to react to me and felt immediate relief in the hug that was my answer. And as I pulled away, I saw a reflection of what I knew my own face looked like.

  Complete and utter disbelief that this was happening.

  Bonnie quietly sat down next to her son and held his hand, while I took the seat that I had been perched in for hours and grasped the other hand. Like me, she seemed too shocked to cry and just sat there, gently stroking his hand and staring at his face as if willing him to wake up. The rest of our family members drifted in and out of the room, and everything began to blur in the time warp that is the ICU. At one point Brad seemed to be breathing on his own, and I excitedly grabbed a nurse and showed her, only to have her reply, “Sometimes they over-breathe their respirators. It’s normal.”

  Normal?

  A little while later, his body began to shake, and once again, I asked Tina, the woman who would become my least favorite ICU nurse, what was going on.

  “Oh, he has a fever so he probably has chills. It’s his body’s way of fighting what’s going on,” she said as she walked in and adjusted some tubes that didn’t need adjusting. “We can give him some Tylenol. That’ll make us feel better, but it really won’t do anything for him. He’s just poopin’ out on us.”

  I’m not kidding. That’s what she said.

  Pooping out on us? Pooping out on us? Lady, my husband is dying. He’s not taking a nap. He’s not even in a restful coma. He’s dying.

  Oh, how I wish I had been better at speaking my mind in that moment. Because at the time I was just so damned stunned at her response that I couldn’t think of anything to say. She walked out of the room without ever really looking at me, off to find the unhelpful Tylenol and leaving me feeling more helpless than I’ve ever felt before or since. That we were all going to be forced to sit there while Brad spiked a fever, knowing that there was nothing we could do to ease whatever discomfort he might be experiencing, was an excruciating feeling.

  For the rest of that day, I tried to distract myself by attempting to take care of everyone else, making sure they had enough water, tissues, and food to fortify them for the emotional journey ahead. I, on the other hand, stopped drinking and eating, positive that my dry mouth and growling stomach were the only things that were reminding my brain that this wasn’t a dream.

  This was really happening.

  Eventually, day turned into night. Sean went home to take care of my nephews, while Kristi and my parents stayed and tried to blend into the background so they wouldn’t be in the way. As the sun set on that endless day, my mother walked up to me and said, “I think you need to get out of here for a while.” I began to protest. “There’s nothing that we can do right now, and tomorrow will be another long day,” she continued. “One of us will go to a hotel with you, and the other two will go home and be with the kids for a while. Who do you want to stay?”

  Although leaving Brad was the last thing I wanted to do, I looked over at my in-laws who were standing around him in a circle. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from Brad the entire night, I realized that I had had the night before alone with him and that I wanted my in-laws to have that time, too—time when they wouldn’t have to worry about the rest of us so they could say what needed to be said.

  I walked over to Bonnie. “My parents think I should leave for a little while. I won’t be gone long. Is that okay with you?”

  She nodded silently and I turned back to my family.

  “Kristi,” I said. “I want Kristi to come. You and Dad go home and check on the kids and make sure they’re okay.”

  I’m not sure if Kristi was flattered or terrified that I had chosen her. But being not only my sister but also my best friend, she shouldn’t have been surprised that her calming presence was the one I wanted. I hugged my in-laws and my family, and we made our way out of the ICU for what would turn out to be just a few short hours. Kristi and I didn’t talk at first as we strapped ourselves into her car and she began to drive to a destination she had already chosen.

  “I can’t believe this,” I broke the silence, “but I need to stop by the store. I don’t think I brought any contact solution, and I’ve got to take my contacts out for a little while.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t bring anything to spend the night. I need to grab a nightshirt and a toothbrush.”

  A small smile crept across my face. “We need to go to Walmart.”

  It was an inside joke between Brad and me that we could never take a road trip—big or small—without needing to go to a Walmart. A month earlier we had been in New Mexico for a friend’s graduation from medical school, and I realized that I had forgotten to get him a card to go with his gift.

  “Can you even spend one day away from a Walmart?” Brad had asked jokingly as we stepped into the bright fluorescent lights.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “They have everything. Stop giving me a hard time. I just need a card.”

  The irony of it was that by the time we left, Brad had also picked up two shirts, a pair of sweatpants, and a package of socks. As we shopped, we laughed about how it didn’t matter where you were, the shoppers in any given Walmart across the country were all the same. And we made the comment that it probably didn’t matter where we traveled or for how long, we would always have to spend at least forty-five minutes in a Walmart.

  So, there I was in a Walmart, getting stuff that I had forgotten because I’m always forgetting something. Only instead of Brad shopping next to me, I had Kristi, who had probably never even been in that store before in her life.

  “What about something to make you sleep?” she asked as we wheeled our way through the pharmacy looking for the contact solution.

  “Sleep?” I asked as if she had just said a foreign word.

  “You need to get a little rest,” she said.

  “But what if something happens and I’m all doped up?”

  “It won’t,” she assured me. “You still have all day tomorrow to get through. Just get something. Benadryl. Tylenol PM. Anything.”

  I picked up a package of Unisom, telling myself that I would just take half of one, hoping that would be enough to make my body relax a little and sleep for maybe an hour. We made our way to the checkout, and I looked around at all of the people buying groceries or plants for their gardens. I could not believe that I was standing in line, buying contact solution like a normal person, while my husband lay dying in a hospital only miles away. I had this inexplicable urge to tap the woman in front of me on the shoulder and say, “Did you know my husband is dying? Yup. Never coming home again. But I needed contact solution and a sleep aid, so here we are!”

  But I kept quiet as I loaded my purchases onto the counter.

  “Have a nice day!” said the clerk cheerfully as we picked up our bags.

  And we both just stared at her.

  • • •

  For the second night in a row, I found myself staring at the ceiling of a hotel.

  It was a nicer ceiling—Courtyard by Marriott beats a roach motel any day. But I lay there staring straight up, still and quiet, listening to the sounds of Kristi unsuccessfully trying to sleep in the next bed, her soft sniffles giving her away. By that point, I had taken two whole Unisom, which should have been enough to knock me out for at least a few hours.

  I thought I had at least another day—probably another night—with Brad in the ICU, and everyone was right: if I went another night with no sleep, I would probably collapse. But despite my best efforts, sleep never came. My body stayed rigid and pulsing as if I were being emotionally electrocuted right there in the bed. I remained there in agony, wanting desperately to get back to the hospital but also wanting my sister to get some rest.

  And then my cell phone rang.

  “Catherine?�
� I heard my mother-in-law’s voice. “You need to get back here. He’s getting close.”

  I jumped up from the bed and switched on the light. I knew I shouldn’t have left. Kristi was already pulling on her clothes while I searched for mine in the pile where I’d left them on the floor. Neither one of us said a word as we ran down the hall and out of the hotel, jumping into her car and speeding toward the hospital while calling my parents along the way.

  It was 3:00 a.m. And in a few hours my life would change forever.

  We walked into Brad’s room, where Bonnie was still sitting in the chair I’d left her in. Brenda had moved two-year-old Amanda to the quiet waiting room we had taken over at the end of the hall to hopefully let her get a little sleep. Jim stood in the corner, shifting his feet, a helpless look on his face that seemed to mirror what we were all feeling. Brad looked the same to me, the relentless machines beeping and the ventilator making his chest move up and down in a maddeningly rhythmic way. I sat back down in my chair and leaned toward Brad’s ear.

  “It’s okay to go,” I whispered, not believing what was coming out of my mouth. “I’m here now. It’s okay to go if you need to. I love you.”

  “Mrs. Tidd?” said a doctor behind me. “Can we speak to you for a minute?”

  I slowly stood up and followed him out of the room. We stood in the hall with several other doctors and I waited for them to begin.

  “I know that this is a particularly difficult time for you and your family, and there is really no good time to ask this,” he said, “but have you given any thought to organ donation?”

  “Organ donation?”

  “Yes…well…given your husband’s accident, and that he is young and in excellent shape, as far as we can see, he is an ideal candidate. The only thing that isn’t functioning properly is his brain. But the rest of his body will probably be able to help a lot of people.”

  I know that some people struggle with the concept of organ donation, thinking it’s gross or insensitive or some combination of the two. But I didn’t. As soon as I found out that Brad might be able to help others, I knew immediately that’s what he would want to do. He was a registered organ donor, but not only that—my husband was the most generous person I knew: volunteering with the Boy Scouts before we even had kids, changing tires on the side of the road for strangers, and dropping everything to help a friend if they needed it. Of course Brad would want to do this.

  And practically speaking, what in the heck was he going to do with all of that stuff anyway?

  “What do I need to do?”

  “We have a representative here from the Donor Alliance who needs to ask you some questions. Then you’ll just need to sign some forms and that will be it.”

  I asked my mother-in-law to come with me to meet Rita, the Donor Alliance counselor, just in case I was asked some questions about Brad’s childhood that I wouldn’t know. Rita led us to a private room to fill out the forms, and she asked us questions about his way of life, allergies, previous surgeries, and sexual habits. And suddenly it occurred to me.

  God, we were boring.

  I mean, Brad had never done anything with a prostitute. We thought about having a joint crack habit but could never seem to find the time. We hadn’t even traveled overseas and contracted a good case of mad cow disease.

  When I looked at our past written out on that questionnaire, I realized that we had to be one of the dullest couples on the planet.

  I didn’t know much about the organ donation process, never once thinking that it would actually be something I would need to know about. And something that I don’t think most people realize is that what makes organ donation possible is the one thing that is hardest on the surviving family members: the doctors have to keep that person alive and everything functioning in order to remove the organs.

  Once the family has agreed to the donation, the transplant team has to wait until the person is declared brain dead by a battery of doctors before they can proceed. Once that declaration has been made, they are just waiting around for you to go so that they can get to work. And it’s up to you to decide when to leave.

  In other words, there is no final moment when you hear some machine flatline and you feel better about taking off and grabbing a latte on your way home.

  So, you’re in kind of a medical stalemate. You don’t want to leave your spouse because all those beeps are telling you that he’s still functioning. But the doctors can’t do what they need to do until you take off. And, frankly, there’s probably someone in that hospital who’s waiting for a heart and thinking, “If that thing doesn’t come within the hour, I’m sure as hell not tipping 20 percent.”

  When it comes to dilemmas, this question of when to leave ranks right up there with which child do you love more. It’s damn near impossible.

  “You know, many of our family members find it helpful to take a little memento of their loved ones, such as a lock of hair,” Rita said gently as we waited for the doctors to agree that Brad was officially gone.

  And at that point I looked into her innocent, helpful, well-meaning face. And I laughed.

  This sound was probably a little startling in the halls of the ICU. Laughter is not something you hear a lot over the beeping and ventilators because, for some reason, people don’t find death, near death, or comas very funny. But it was suddenly apparent to me that this woman was prepared to take all of my husband’s organs and she had never even laid eyes on him. And the reason I know this is because Brad was bald. Completely. Mr. Clean. Not one hair on his head.

  So, with a hysterical note in my voice, I replied to her. “From where? His chest?”

  Exhausted, mentally depleted, and completely confused about how I had suddenly found myself in this situation, hysteria seemed like a logical progression. I had finally reached the point where I was too tired and too busy leaping from cozy suburban mom to insane young widow to really care what anyone around me thought. Now that I think about it, it was probably the healthiest emotion I’d had during the entire three days at the hospital because it was the most genuine. And it was my first hint that I wasn’t in danger of losing my most precious coping mechanism—my sense of humor.

  After all of the questions had been answered and the paperwork had been signed, Bonnie and I found ourselves back with Brad, on either side of him, each holding a hand.

  “I can’t leave. We can’t just leave him, can we?” I asked tearfully.

  “I don’t want to go either,” she said. “He just looks like he’s sleeping. We can’t go.”

  “I’ll stay with him,” I heard behind me.

  I turned around and there was Cindy, my mom’s best friend from college, who had just gotten off the plane from Houston to be with us. A nurse who had answered dozens of calls from my mother throughout my childhood about what various rashes might be and what does it mean if I can’t bend this or that. Cindy had been outside the room, talking to the ICU nurses and getting updates on what was going on.

  “I’ll stay with him when you feel like you can go so that he won’t be alone. I’ll stay through the whole procedure. I won’t leave him alone. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  And she left the room.

  Bonnie and I sat there for another twenty minutes. The only sounds in the room were the beep and hiss of the machines. Brad didn’t twitch and the only thing that made him move at all was the technology around him keeping him alive.

  And then suddenly everything felt different.

  I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew he was gone. The coloring in his face changed, so maybe that was it, but other than that he looked the same. I just knew he wasn’t there. In an instant, an intense loneliness invaded my body and I knew that he wasn’t with me anymore.

  “I’m ready,” I said to Bonnie. “I’m ready to go. That’s not Brad anymore.”

  “I don’t think so either,” s
he said.

  And with each of us kissing him on the forehead, we let go.

  I left the hospital almost exactly as I had entered it three days before, clutching the bag full of the clothes I thought he would be coming home in. That bag would stay packed in my closet for years, as if waiting for the call to come saying I could pick him up. I was wearing the same thing I had left the house in seventy-two hours before, clothes that had been sweated in and then, once damp, had given me chills. The sun was shining, the summer air smelled sweet, and life was buzzing all around me. There was only one major difference.

  I was a widow.

  - Memorializing -

  if I get the casket without the four-wheel drive, how much will that run me?

  4

  After three days in the ICU that ended in someone handing me my husband’s wedding ring as I stumbled out the door, the only thing I wanted to do was get home, find the smallest corner in my house, and sink into it. But, as we all know, the time in our lives when we want to be alone the most is also the time that it’s least likely to happen.

  As my mother drove me home from the hospital that afternoon, neither one of us spoke. I could feel her glancing nervously at me every once in a while, which was something that I would eventually get used to. I looked out the car window in wonder at people going to work, going to the zoo, and just going about their lives. Kids played at the park; people talked on cell phones; and restaurant parking lots were full for the midday lunch rush. It amazed me that the planet was still turning on its axis and that no one else had felt the earthquake that shook my world the moment Brad died.

  I fluctuated between not being able to function and wondering about silly details, like whether anyone had remembered to take my daughter to ballet the day before. When I asked my mom what had been going on with the kids for the last few days, I could tell that she didn’t want me to worry about such minute details. But little did she know that those little worries were keeping me from thinking about the big picture. It was a lot easier to wonder in that moment if the kids had been to the park that day rather than think about an enormous life in front of me that I would have to lead as their only parent.