My essay, Boxing Day Surprise on December 26th, told of my wife’s hospitalization that day for a stroke. Many Kossacks, in the comments, asked for updates. I am finally able to bring myself to tap out that my beloved wife of 51+ years suffered cardiac arrest before dawn on January 7 and could not be revived. That’s her standing in front of Oscar Wilde’s house in Dublin in 2018. I am beside myself with grief.
The shock was doubled because her treatment seemed to be going so well. After an initial set back from reaction to treatment with a strong anticoagulant, the ICU stabilized her, moved her to a step-down ICU and, then, to a rehabilitation hospital for therapy aimed at getting her home to me. Several days of therapy showed lots of improvement. But before first light on Friday morning, I was awakened by the call that no one with a loved one in the hospital ever wants to receive. A lifetime of companionship was over.
To add to the horror, I had become symptomatic and tested positive for COVID earlier in the week, so in its fuck-you-and-your-whole-family way that COVID has, I was thrown into quarantine and robbed of my last chances to visit her. Because my daughters also tested positive, she’d had no visitors her last two days.
She was a devoted reader of this Community and, when she occasionally wrote, used the handle, Expat Okie. She was a strong, American, Democratic woman, a wife, a mother, a gifted attorney, a dedicated civil servant, an honest and forthright bank regulator, and the finest lifetime companion for whom I ever could have wished.
I can’t yet imagine my life as it is to come. With the help of my daughters, priceless and irreplaceable, I expect it will involve a lot of keeping my head down and placing one foot before the other. Please forgive me if I don’t appear a lot in the comments. I’m unsure when I’ll next find something important enough to write about.