The panic comes suddenly, without warning. One moment I feel decently sane, just coming home from an average day at work, looking foward to a glass of wine.
My husband is nowhere to be found, even though his vehicle is here.
I dial his cell.
He doesn’t pick up.
Panic hits me like a ton of bricks, from zero to a hundred in 0.4 seconds.
I instantly go into full panic mode. My brain screams at me “HE’S DEAD, HE’S DEAD, HE’S DEAD.” There’s no reason to assume he’s dead. He didn’t set out on a dangerous adventure this morning. He doesn’t have a life-threatening illness. He doesn’t even have high blood pressure if he remembers to take his meds, which I remind him of daily.
But right now, logic is outnumbered. My brain is in worst-case-scenario-mode, and I have no choice but to follow its erratic lead. I run all over our ten-acre property, yelling his name. Our neighbours hear me and I get them in on the search for him, infecting them with my hysteria. “What if he had a heart attack and is lying somewhere, dying?” I wail, hyperventilating. I’m frantic, convinced that something terrible has happened.
He comes home an hour later, tipsy and happy, having spent the afternoon with a buddy who lives out of cell range. A friend picked him up. Everything is fine.
That scenario happened five years ago. I was deep in the throes of my anxiety and depression, drinking too much and not in therapy yet. I had lots of anxieties and fears, but they all paled in comparison to the biggest, most crippling, at times debiliating fear of them all: my husband dying.
I was 22 and he 48 when we met (our age difference is 25.5 years).
I know, I know.
Funnily enough, I didn’t know it then. I was young and in love, and when you’re young and in love you believe anything is possible. Interestingly, by believing it, we made it so. I thank my lucky stars often that we didn’t meet ten years later. At 32, I would have been too cynical to believe that love conquers all; I wouldn’t have given us a chance. 22-year old me wasn’t cynical at all; she was hurt and lonely, but full of an almost childish optimism that things could and would work out.
And so they did.
I’ve always known that the chances of my husband dying before me are high. I would be in serious denial if I wouldn’t expect it. But for the first 13 or so years together I barely thought about it. Life was busy, he was in great physical and mental shape, and dying was very far from my mind.
When he retired and we moved to our beloved cowboy town he was 62, I was 37. 62 is still young, right? We had the time of our lives during that first desert summer in our new home, and it felt like a new chapter of our life was just beginning. We easily had another 25, 30 years ahead of us. No reason to panic.
But at the end of that desert summer, Rich became very sick. For months he got worse with each passing day, and his mortality suddenly took center stage. Gone were the days where I could tell myself that all that (his age, illness, death) was far off in the future. While we both hoped for him to get healthy again, I now had to consider several other, frightening possibilities: would I have to become his carer? Hire someone to look after him so I could continue to work? Was it possible I could become a widow?
I had just turned 38.
We got lucky. He received a diagnosis and treatment, and he recovered. He got better, but something in me had irreparably changed. Every cell in my body had been awakened to the fact that there was more of the pain and terror I’d just gone through in my future. I would go through it again, maybe more than once. And one day, I really would be left behind.
I wasn’t consciously thinking about it. On the contrary, I didn’t want to deal with my messy emotions and fears at all, so I shoved them down as far as they would go, and then poured a shitload of booze on top to drown them. Unfortunately, to quote Frida Kahlo: “I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim.”
That’s when the anxiety attacks started. When I picked fights with my husband and got so mad at him that I could tell myself afterwards that I’d be better off without him anyway. That’s also when I left for a year to work part-time out of town, spending half the time away from him. Not that I knew why I was doing it then. I told myself that I did it for more money and job security, to gain the seniority that would secure me a job at home in the future.
But looking back now, 6 years later? I was not only running away from the unprocessed trauma, but I was also practicing. Practicing for the time that was to come, when I would be alone 100% of the time, not just 50%. I needed to prove to myself that I could do it; that I would survive.
We don’t deal well with death in our society. It’s our biggest shared experience, the destination we’ll all arrive at sooner or later, yet we act like death doesn’t exist. We don’t talk about it and we don’t like to be reminded of it, so we leave our old and dying in designated places like care homes and hospitals, telling ourselves that they deserve to be cared for by specially trained people.
Death isn’t special, though. It’s the most commonplace, everyday occurrence. We should think about it and talk about it and prepare for it. Not in a morbid way - more like planning for a vacation we know we will take one day.
I’ve done a lot of growing in the last few years. Getting older can teach us so much if we’re open to it. It also helps that I started therapy. I quit drinking. I work in a job that’s touched by death often. And we’ve started losing friends and acquaintances to death.
I’m thinking about death often. Not as something to fear, but as something that awaits us all. Living with animals is a great teacher since their lives are so much shorter than ours. I’ve had to say goodbye to beloved furry friends often, and of one thing I’m absolutely certain: the pain and grief upon their passing are worth it. All the love and companionship and fun and laughter they give us while they’re alive are worth the price at the end.
I know people who don’t want another pet because of the pain that awaits at the end. But what about all the joy before? What about all the love?
It’s heartbreaking to miss out on that because of fear; because of a pain that hasn’t happened yet.
We are afraid of what we don’t know. That’s why I want to get to know death so that it stops being scary. I love The Tale of the Three Brothers that appears in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The last line is wonderful:
“And then, he greeted Death as an old friend, went with him gladly, and, as equals, they departed this life."
Living with a much older man has given me countless gifts over the years. Life experience, knowledge, kids and grandkids, financial security, friends of all ages. He taught me that most problems solve themselves (to my utter astonishment this has turned out to be true). He’s also fond of cliches, routinely telling people to not sweat the small stuff, always followed by this zinger: “You want to know a secret? There is no big stuff!”
Rich is turning 70 this summer. We’ve been married 19 years this month, together for 21. I thank the universe daily that we met, and for all the time we’ve had already. I remind myself every day to not take our time together for granted. I know that one day it will all be over. Pain and grief await all who love deeply.
I’ve accepted that this is the price we pay for love. And you know what? I would do it again in a heartbeat. It’s worth it - he’s worth it.
Happy anniversary, my love.