20 Years Ago Today - Farewell, Kim

It was 20 years ago today.  Well, actually, tomorrow:  February 8th, 2006.  But I'm posting it today. 

It was one of those times in my life that was forever altered. And it was unlike any other trauma and recovery that I’ve experienced in my life. 

As the sun rose about 7:00am on a clear, crisp February morning, my first wife, Kim, passed away in our front room on a hospital bed which was delivered to our home the day prior. She had suffered from metastatic breast cancer for 14 months, first diagnosed just prior to Christmas 2004. At the time of her diagnosis, we had been together for three years. And we just got engaged four months earlier.  Ok, here we go.

Initial diagnosis was Stage IIB.  What that means is essentially "concerning, but possible to eradicate." The physician’s advice was a radical mastectomy (removal of the affected breast) followed by a months-long regimen of chemotherapy. The surgery occurred right after the holidays, in mid-January 2005, and the chemotherapy concluded by June. The summer follow-up indicated that Kim was in the clear. By September, however, nagging back pain led her back to the doctor for additional scans. This time, and on the same day the White Sox were having their World Series parade in downtown Chicago in late October, the results were horrifying; larger, easy-to-see tumors had spread to her lower vertebrae. Smaller ones, barely visible on the scans, were developing on her liver. She immediately went from the results to the chemo chair again. And this time they administered intense chemotherapy followed by radiation in a more frequent regimen. We tried to watch the joy of the White Sox parade on television while we were now dealing with  Stage 4.  And that, my friends, is an unrecoverable diagnosis. 

Kim weakened. By mid-December she was unable to work her day job and had to quit. By the turn of the new year, 2006, she was walking much slower. I remember receiving a phone call at my office from the hospital on Wednesday, February 1st. The staff compelled me to come quickly to the hospital as she had jaundiced during yet another treatment. When I arrived at the parking lot, I spotted her car; it was parked awkwardly and not squared up to the parking spot. At that moment, my instincts told me that the clock was moving faster now. Not good. The doctors were doing all sorts of tests on her, she was then admitted to a room, was trying to be brave, but she was getting quieter and weaker. She and I also met with chaplains regularly each day. By Friday, it was decided that, with her desire and consent, she would move home into hospice by Monday. And so, we did.

Home and settled, and with my many family members and friends on a schedule to assist with medication administration, eating, dressing, etc., we settled into a routine which we were told by hospice staff could “last several months”, but Kim never made it beyond about 40 hours. Late Tuesday evening as she was propped up on the hospital bed in our front room watching television, she asked for a strawberry smoothie from Starbucks. That was pretty much the last thing I remember her articulating to me. We surely did get it for her and, between tinctures of morphine, she got that smoothie down. My sister and her partner stayed with us overnight. Next morning, about 6am, my sister awakened me in my room though I’d barely slept during the night. She tearfully but with clarity, “You better come. Kim is going.” I leapt up, ran to the front room to find that she was breathing shallow and infrequent. I knew we were in the final moments. I scrambled to put on some Early Music vocal music that she had introduced me to years before – Countertenor Alfred Deller’s “The Three Ravens”, “Barbara Allen”, and other Elizabethan-era tunes. I wanted her to exit this world with music that she enjoyed and that she had enjoyed performing over the years. The sun came up and was shining radiantly that morning. Kim died just past 7:00am.  She was 39 years old and about 7 weeks shy of her 40th birthday. I was 36. We were married just 3 months earlier.

Quite the experience.

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At 56 now, and living a life far removed from that February day, the imprint of my experience will, of course, be with me until I also die. At the time, I barely knew anyone else who had experienced such a thing at a similar ago to me - certainly none of my friends and family. Despite the love, affection, and actions from my cherished network during the immediate days and weeks after she passed, I felt more or less out on an island in my experience and grief. I learned how to work through it mostly on my own and as best I could. That was really something else.

Since Kim’s death, as I’ve experienced more living, I’ve also experienced quite a bit more dying; family members, some distant friends from my high school and college days, work acquaintances, friends of friends, etc. I expect to exponentially experience much more if I’m still alive two decades hence.

I’ve also changed in many ways in the intervening years; some of those changes I’ve been highly proud of, while less so in other ways. I’m far more tolerant of certain things than I was back then, but paradoxically I’ve grown much more intolerant of other of facets of life. I now enjoy a beautiful, loving and lovely family that began within just a few years of Kim’s death. I’ve also made many new friends, acquaintances and colleagues, as well as hitting more personal and professional accomplishments that I could not have really conceived of in February 2006. And, sure, people have come and gone as is inevitable.  

I’ve been fortunate to retain relatively robust health, never having had to (so far) rely on any medication for physical or mental illness. I maintain my grounding worldview through the lens of my Christian faith (and though not shy about it, I’ve reverted to being more private on that aspect as it had was for her and I when we were together). And if witnessing the death of my spouse has taught me the most basic of lessons of life, it’s that 1) we’re more than merely a collection of atoms and molecules put here by chance, 2) we should be making every effort to expand love and joy in the world, and help those in need as often as possible, and 3) seize every opportunity for happiness and peace, and discard those things that impede it.  If you think  you have 'more time',  you do not. 

When I think about Kim these days, what’s striking to me – and perhaps striking a somewhat pessimistic tone – is that I don’t usually first think of “what would life be like if was she alive today?”, but rather I initially think about what she has missed in the America that has evolved since her death. The advent of the smartphone and the proliferation of social media – the twin toxic mechanisms by which I’m firmly convinced has help bring about the current wretched state of our country – missed her almost entirely. I’m grateful in that sense that she hasn’t lived to experience it because I’m convinced that she would be repulsed by the current situation and what’s led up to it in the previous decade.

But of course, sure, I sometimes also speculate about what life would’ve been like personally for her and I assuming that 1) she lived, and 2) we remained married to this day (which I’m pretty certain we would have). I’m convinced music and music-making would be the giant force it was when we were together just as it has helped define my life ever since. We would have undoubtedly continued to travel. We would not have had children as that is something she never wanted (and that I was OK with at that period in my life). We would most certainly have had pets - something that was carried along with me to the present day.  But again, these are all just speculations on things that might have come to pass, but were never going to.  That's life, and death, no? 

20 years. Wow. Most days now, that feels a blink of an eye.  Also, I don’t consciously think of her every day.  That most certainly ceased years ago. But my subconscious coupled with our experiences have imprinted me for life. I am the better man for having had Kim as a vital and critical part of my life’s journey, and I am blessed and grateful for how it has shaped me.

If you’ve also lost a spouse, I hope that where ever you are on life’s journey, that you are also making the most of it.

(Pic: November 2005, Charleston, SC. Our honeymoon. Kim was too sick to leave our hotel for the first three days after we arrived. This was on or about Thanksgiving Day, and she felt good enough to go for a stroll for a time. She would pass less than three months later.)