For the record . . .

I wasn’t being entirely truthful in my first post. My beautiful man did experience cardiac death and he did pass away on September 22nd. But a lot of things happened between those two events. Joe’s heart stopped beating sitting in his recliner on the night of September 9th, as we were chatting back and forth and watching the movie “Love & Other Drugs”. The picture of that night is so hard to get out of my head, and the sequence of events creates a lot of anxiety and, honestly, guilt in me. I thought he’d fallen asleep because he sounded like he was snoring, but he was gasping for oxygen because his heart stopped beating. It had only been seconds when I noticed it, which was followed by vigorous shaking, screaming and crying while I dialed 911. I had to do chest compressions in his recliner because he was 6’2″ and weight 240 pounds and I couldn’t get him to the floor. Ten long minutes of compressions before EMS showed up and took over, but they got him back before they left for the hospital.

September 9th. That was the last day he spoke to me, the last time he kissed me, the last time he wrapped his arms around me. The next 12 days were spent in ICU. He was on a ventilator and in a drug induced coma for the first 2 days. Once the sedation was removed his eyes would open but he never responded to any commands from the doctors. We had so much hope that he would recover, and not once did a single medical professional tell me there was a chance he wouldn’t. And then on the 9th day he went septic, and then his organs began to fail. I signed his DNR as he would have wanted me to. I knew I had to let him go peacefully. My beautiful man, the love of my life, my Superman died at 1:07am on September 22nd, 2023.

The look on his face that evening when I thought he was snoring, that’s the face I see when I close my eyes. Did I try hard enough to save him? Was I doing CPR correctly? Why didn’t I pick up on the signs beforehand? These are the questions I will wrestle with forever. No matter how many times my friends and family reassure me that I did everything I could have. He was my person and sometimes it feels like I let him down.