Not Enough Words, Seven Years Later

Folks, as of midnight 9/21/11, it has been exactly seven years since I last saw my husband, Michael B. Caffrey, alive.

I keep wondering what, if anything, I could’ve done to save Michael’s life, but none of us knew that his heart was about to give out.  If Michael had known anything of the sort, he would’ve camped himself in the nearest hospital ER even though he hated hospitals; there’s no way he’d have wanted to have his heart completely fail after four heart attacks, the first one having started around 10 a.m. on 9/21/04.   He fell into a coma quickly thereafter and never again regained consciousness.

Michael fought hard; the doctors said they’d never seen anyone fight as hard as Michael did to cling to life.  There was a pattern to the seizures he was having on the right side of his body; he appeared to be trying to communicate with me, even though he was in a coma.  He certainly knew I was there and he was trying very hard to make his body work; he just couldn’t do it, that’s all.

At 8 p.m., about two hours after a fourth heart attack had lowered Michael’s blood pressure to 30/10 with a pulse rate of 4, Michael was pronounced dead.  And I had to say goodbye to the man I’ve loved the most in all the world; I did my best to do this, even though it was and remains difficult for me to believe that my beloved husband Michael, an extremely creative, warm, and witty person, was dead.

I’ve told you in this blog post about how my beloved husband died.  But I cannot tell you how he lived, except with gusto and grace; I cannot tell you how much he loved me, only how much I loved him.

So, even seven years later, I don’t have the words to express the depth of my feelings for my beloved husband.  I wish I did; oh, do I wish I did.

All I can tell you is this: Michael changed my life for the better.  I miss him every single hour of every single day.  I know I always will.   And because of that great love, I will keep trying to help our writing find its audience (his, mine, ours, makes no never-mind now because it all has to go through me); that’s the only way I know to keep even a small part of him alive.