A Spoonful of Sugar....

June 15, 2012

The song tells us "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down".  Well, it will take a hell of a lot of sugar to help me swallow the bitter pill that my husband's death has prescribed. 

I hardly remember leaving the hospital that night, leaving him behind.  His body growing cold and blue.  Stuffed into the black plastic bag from the morgue.  I know I must have made it home somehow, but I don't remember, even today, how it happened.  That's the mind's way of preserving sanity I think, blocking out spaces of time so you don't have to recall the emotion and pain.  I know at some point I took a half of a Xanax so I could quiet my brain and try to get some sleep. It didn't help much, I was up every 20-30 minutes, walking around the house, looking into rooms, listening for something that would say I had been dreaming this whole event.  I would go to his office, get on his computer and read emails but not comprehending the English language.  I remember feeling like half of my body was gone, like I was a vapor moving through the walls of my home seeing our life played out like a movie I was eerily a part of.

At 1:00 in the morning, my house phone rang.  It was One Legacy and they wanted to discuss organ donation.  They had 45 minutes worth of questions to ask me to evaluate if Ron was a candidate for organ donation.  I was exhausted and wanted to hang up, but I knew they had a ticking clock to harvest anything usable so I sat up in bed and began answering her questions one after the other after the other. I suppose the clinical side of me took over at this point because there was nothing left of me from the emotional side.  The interview was unbelievably intrusive.  They wanted to know details of our sex life together, in years before we were together, did he ever have gay sex, sex with animals, STDs, other communicable diseases, world travel, places of work.  It was endless.  I had to keep thinking to myself "this may help someone see again, walk again, have normal skin again...." Finally, after an hour and 20 minutes (WTF didn't they say only 45 minutes?) it was over.  I tried to lay back down and fall asleep, but all I could think about was my husband - the organ donor. 

I knew there were people I had to inform about his death before it became world wide news on Facebook.  Damn Facebook!  I was petrified - some people have no self control and will post all kinds of crap before they even know if his family has been told.  I was scared to death that someone would post something and his cousins in New York or San Francisco would read it. What a horrible way to find out someone you care about has died.  Thankfully, nobody did and at around 6 am I woke up and started to text and call my friends.  My friend Jaime would be up getting ready for work and she should hear this from me, not of facebook.  I texted her "Call me if you are up".  About 15 minutes later, she called.  I told her I wanted her to hear it from me and I heard in her voice she was in disbelief.    By 9:11 am, I had confirmation that all of Ron's family had been informed of his death.  I found a picture that I loved of him and posted to facebook that he had died.  This began a cascade of emails, posts, messaged and phone calls.  It was strangely mechanical to be telling the story over and over again.  It was like a script; trying not to cry, getting to the point, allowing the other person to express their shock, disbelief, condolences and trying to get off the phone before I completely lost it again.  It was it's own form of torture as the morning wore on.

During all of this time of informing the masses, I was also dealing with the logistics and decisions about where Ron was to be buried.  He had a family plot in New Jersey and his father was buried there.  We had talked about his burial many times during the past 6 years since his first heart attack and his other health issues.  We just assumed he would be buried with his family.  "Put me in a box and put me on a plane" he would say.  But, now that reality had hit, it wasn't so easy to do. How could we have really known all that needed to be done in such a short amount of time.  My heart was aching and I didn't want him so far away.  Plus, I rationalized with my sister in law - It's not like he proclaimed "When I Die - Bury me in Jersey"!  Finally, after spending some time with all the kids, they expressed it would be nice to have him here so they, Alexandra and I could visit if we wanted to.  My sister in law confirmed with her Rabbi that I wasn't breaking some obscure Jewish Law by essentially going away from his intention to be buried back east.  Done. Decided.  He was born a New Yorker and will rest in the Paradise of California.

Now, we had to make the trek to Mt Sinai Mortuary and Cemetery in Hollywood Hills to plan the funeral.