Walking into the Storm: A Traumatic Ending to a Beautiful Life

I’ve been thinking the last few days that I need to tell the story of Jim’s death from start to finish. Mostly for me. Some for those who want to hear it but don’t want to ask.

It was Tuesday evening, July 14. My parents had been here for a long weekend and had left that morning.  We had finished dinner and were getting ready for our evening exercise. I was tired and not really feeling like getting out in the heat. “Which cup are we taking for Susan?” Jim asked.

“What do you mean – which cup?” I replied, impatiently. “There’s only one cup out.”

I apologized for being impatient as we got our children buckled into the car.

We began driving toward Harding’s campus, where we always go for our walk. He drove to the end of the street and turned right. I turned back to check and make sure the garage door was closed, as he always asked me to do. It was. I started reading to him from the gospel of Luke – we were working together reading through the New Testament. “Did you see those buildings being torn down?” he asked.

“Of course I didn’t see the buildings,” I said, exasperated. “I was reading.”

“You’ll have to notice on the way back,” he said, cheerfully. I still haven’t noticed…

When we arrived at our destination, I apologized again. “I really don’t know why I’m so irritable,” I said.

He turned to me and looked me in the eye. “Stacey, I love you. Even when you’re irritable. But, maybe some exercise outdoors will help your state of mind.”

It was our best outdoor exercise since Chris was born. We talked some – I can’t remember what about. At certain points along our walk, he would break off from the kids and me and run an extra jaunt. As we neared the end, we were both so hot and tired, but in good moods. He broke off from me one last time, as I said, “We’ve both got this!”

“We’ll see,” he said.

I finished my route before he did. I ended the workout on my Apple watch and began my cooldown walk around a small parking lot near the larger one where we parked. As I finished that loop, he came running down the sidewalk, his bright blue shirt shining in the evening sun. “Make that loop again,” he said as he crossed the crosswalk and slowed down to begin his cooldown. I did what he asked.

When I turned around to complete the last half of the loop, I saw him laying on the pavement in the bigger parking lot where we’d parked. I thought he’d gotten tired and maybe a little overheated, so I started to walk toward him. As I noticed that he really wasn’t moving, I began to jog. As I got close to him, I began calling his name. No response. I knelt on the ground beside him and shook his shoulder. It was a dead weight. I pushed him onto his back. His head flopped to the side. His jaw was slack. His eyes were open and the pupils fixed. I remembered a story he told about spooking kids in a cemetery by pretending to be dead. “You’d better not be joking with me!” I screamed, as tears flowed from my eyes and I willed my right hand to feel his neck for a pulse. I felt none.

I screamed. I shook him. I cried. A car pulled up. “Is everything ok?” a woman asked.

“I think he’s dead!” I cried.

“Do you know him?”

“He’s my husband!”

“You need to call 911!” she said as she hopped out of the car and came up to me. I fumbled with my phone, finally typing in the numbers.

I don’t remember how many people came running at various times. One man was convinced he felt a weak pulse. Another said, “He’s shaking. He must have a pulse.”

He wasn’t shaking. Not like they thought. His muscles were quivering – much like the hearts I’d seen in ventricular fibrillation during the time I spent in grad school. He really didn’t have a pulse. I knew it. The EMTs verified it when they got there. I watched them do CPR. I watched them shock his heart. I watched him void his stomach on the pavement. I saw my children being pushed by a stranger in their double stroller. I don’t know how much Susan saw.

They couldn’t find the key to our car in his pocket, so someone from the university’s Public Safety office drove me to the hospital behind the ambulance. While on the way, I called my Mom. “I think Jim just died,” I told her through my tears. She told me they’d come. When we arrived at the hospital I jumped out of the car before it stopped moving and tried to run behind his stretcher. I was restrained by a man at the door – told I had to go in through other doors to check in and complete the COVID-19 screening.

I waited in the waiting room, trembling. My friend, Trixie, left her home to come to me. I didn’t think until too late to ask her to bring the key to my house, so she drove back home, retrieved the key, and went to my house to pick up things for my children, who were being cared for by our good friends, Jon and Joyce Wrye. I sent text messages to a few friends and family, letting them know what was going on.

The president of the university came and sat with me. So did Jim’s boss. An EMT came out to tell me that they had been able to restart his heart but that he was still in critical condition. I didn’t realize how critical. I was so relieved.

When the ER doctor came to talk to me, I started to understand the seriousness of Jim’s condition. While his heart was beating on its own, he was showing no signs of brain stem activity. He was on a ventilator. It didn’t look good. She said she wanted to get him cleaned up before I saw him.

When I did see him, I could tell it wasn’t good. I sat by him for a few minutes. I think I talked to him a little. I kissed his forehead and noticed that there was still vomit in his ear. I asked the doctor to be straight with me. She told me that it didn’t look good, that I might consider letting his family know that it didn’t look good.

They were getting ready to move him to CCU, and I was so very tired. I was struggling so much because I wanted him to be ok, I wanted him back, I wanted to be with him, but I wanted desperately to get away. They asked me if I wanted to take his shoes, watch, and wedding ring. I slipped his wedding ring off of his finger and looped it on mine so that I could carry everything. When I got to the waiting room on my way out of the hospital, I slid it the rest of the way on. I still wear it every day.

The CCU nurse called me when they got him settled in. She was so sweet, and remembered him from when he was in the CCU in October following his TIA. She made sure that I knew I could call her directly any time to check in. I tried to sleep some. I checked in a couple of times. His condition was the same. My parents arrived sometime around 3:00 AM.

I was able to sleep a little after my parents arrived, but my phone rang just before 5:00 AM. It was the nurse. “James isn’t responding to medications to raise his blood pressure like we want him to,” she said. “You might want to come back.”

July 15, 2020. It was his birthday. I stood at my closet for what seemed like the longest time. What do you wear to go watch your husband die?

I entered through the ER, where they refused entrance to my mother. I felt the heaviness build as I walked toward the CCU alone. He was laying there, flat on the bed, a machine breathing for him. His blood pressures were so low, even though his heart rate was fast. I sat in a chair and leaned my head on the rail of his bed. I think I spoke to him. I can’t remember. The resident physician came in to explain his condition to me. It didn’t look good at all. In fact, he thought it was possible they’d lose him that morning. I asked him if my mother could be with me. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll tell them that she can come.”

That day was such a long, hard day. I felt so numb. When I was in the hospital with him, I felt like I should be home with my kids. When I was home with my kids, I felt like I should be in the hospital with him. I cried a lot. I sat in the corner of his hospital room for quite a while that morning. I didn’t really want to be right next to him. I felt like he was already gone. I didn’t know what I felt. I was just so lost.

At one point, I noticed that there were lots of medical personnel in the room and that the doctor hadn’t left for quite some time. I glanced at the monitor. Jim’s blood pressure was so very low. Low enough that I knew his vital organs weren’t getting enough blood to sustain life. “This could be it,” I thought, and felt like I’d been shocked awake. Eventually, his pressure rose with the medication that they were administering. They didn’t lose him right then, but something changed for me. I knew he was already gone. I knew I was going to have to make the decision no spouse should ever be asked to make. And, even though I knew all of that, I suddenly wanted to be near him – to touch him, to speak to him. That afternoon, I told my mom that I just wanted to crawl in the bed with him and lay there. The nurse couldn’t let me do that, but she brought a reclining chair for me, pushed it right up next to his bed, and lowered the rail so that I could be as close to him as possible. I lay there for most of the rest of the afternoon and evening, just holding his hand. I had to leave every few hours to go nurse my son. I told Jim I was leaving every time and then told him when I returned. I requested that they go ahead and do an EEG so that I could know whether he had any brain activity.

The next day, his sisters were both in town. We received EEG results. The news I knew we would hear – no detectable brain activity. I wept. I asked how long I had. They told me there was no time frame. The nurse and physicians we had that day and the day before were so wonderful and kind that I wanted them to be the ones to help us through the process of ending life support. We planned the rest of the day to give his sisters, niece, and myself time to say goodbye.

Right before it was time to turn off life support, I had time alone with him. I wept loudly – cries that came from the depths of my soul. I promised him that I’d raise his children well, that they’d know who he was, that I’d finish life’s race well. I told him I couldn’t wait to see him in his heavenly body. I started to sing to him. “When peace like a river attendeth my way…” As I sang the verses to the well-known hymn, I willed my voice to get stronger and stronger. I resolved that, no matter how dark the next days got, it would be well with my soul. I heard his sisters singing along with me on the other side of the curtain.

When his sisters and my mother rejoined me, we waited for the doctor to come oversee the removal of life support. While we waited, I felt an urge to pray aloud. It’s so unlike me to pray aloud spontaneously, but I did it anyway. My voice shook with emotion, but was strong and loud as I reminded God of his promise to walk with us into this storm, of his promise to raise us in the end. I called him to keep his promise. I didn’t feel disrespect. I did feel strength. I remembered the prayers recorded in the Bible – where people of God called Him to account for the promises He had made, and I followed their example. I have struggled to pray since then, but the words for that prayer came so quickly, so readily, so strongly. I’m thankful for that.

We stepped out of the room while they removed the ventilator. A nurse came over to pray with us. While she was praying, I noticed another nurse beckoning me back into his room. I slipped behind the curtain and went to his side. He looked a little more like himself without the ventilator, but he was so bloated that it was easy to see that his body had been failing over the last couple of days. The monitor in the room was off, and I found myself wondering how I would know when it was over. His sisters joined me. We cried and kissed him. Eventually, I just felt so completely empty that I sat down by his side and stared blankly while leaning against his still body. I watched the color drain from his lips. The resident came in and silently listened to his chest and checked his eyes. “Is he gone,” one of Jim’s sisters asked. He nodded.

“Time of death?” I heard myself ask.

“6:24.”

“Thank you.”

I stayed a little while with his body and then allowed my mother to walk me to the waiting room while they bathed him and changed his sheets. The nurse came to get us and I went back into the room. I touched his hand. It was cold. Oh, so cold. I shuddered. I felt like I needed to stay longer, like it was expected of me. But, I just wanted to run away. To go home to my babies. To weep alone in our bed. Finally, I cried, “Mom, I can’t stay. I can’t. I feel like I should, but I just can’t do it.”

Our wonderful nurse led me out of the hospital so that I didn’t have to talk to anyone. No judgment. No questioning. Just support.

The next days were grueling days with a full house. We planned. I selected a casket. I made arrangements. I wept when I was alone or just with my parents. It was the end, but it was only the beginning.

Today, we’re almost three weeks out from his collapse. My story is still unfolding. I don’t know what my grief journey will look like. My brain is doing weird things trying to make sense of the trauma. I’ve set up an appointment with a grief counselor. I’m trying to set up my network so that if I really sink into depression, they’ll know. I’m surrounded by family and friends. I’m overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers. And, even though I still struggle to pray real words, I keep trying. Sometimes, a few of them come. Even without them, I have been so confident that God has walked into this darkness with me.

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God,  the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Isaiah 43:1-3a