Fall. A time of change. The leaves change, the weather changes, and for me, my world has changed numerous times in the fall. I have had many surgeries in the fall and illnesses from earlier surgery, that have nearly taken my life. I have been working hard to make peace with Fall for many years, and I was about 95% there.
Then this. The most shocking and tragic thing that I have ever had to face.
Mike and I have had a rough go of things over these past four years. There would be nothing good about going into the details. In early 2020, we made the decision to divorce, even though that goes against everything we believe in. We seemed to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. He moved two miles away, living in an apartment as he figured out where he'd buy another home. After a year, he found a townhome in the city of Santaquin, which is about a 50 minute drive from where I am.
His daughters encouraged him not to move so far away. I didn't think it was wise, but at this point, I kept my feelings to myself. It turned out that he loved Santaquin! The people were down to earth, his church leaders were attentive to him and his health struggles, and he appreciated that. There was a cattle guard right there near the freeway, evidence of the fact that this was "country" and there were big animals around.
I have a patient that is in a care facility in Santaquin. Since Mike and I shared the two pups that we had gotten prior to divorcing, we both loved them, and we traded off having them at our homes. So when he had them, and I hadn't seen them for days, I would sometimes stop at his place and say hello to my furry "kids" that I missed since I was right there in town to see my patient.
Over the past year or so, Mike and I had made peace with our situation. As long as we did not talk about what led up to divorcing, we got along really well. We went in together for the Christmas gifts for the family, we sometimes took a grandson to a birthday meal or event, together we attended games and concerts of the grands. We had a text thread going, and were in contact every day.
Amy had this to say, "Even though it was weird and confusing sometimes the way he kept so connected with you after the divorce, now that he is gone, I’m so grateful you two were still so plugged into each other. I feel like your divorce, though difficult and heartbreaking for both of you, gave you both space to appreciate and enjoy each other for the last year and a half of his life without the difficulty of living together and the tension and stress that was present when you were married. Now that I have the full picture of how little time he had left, it almost feels like a tender mercy that you could have that shift in your relationship before he was gone. ❤️"
When Mike moved so far away, I mentioned several times to friends and family, that I was worried that we'd just find him dead because none of us would know he wasn't doing okay. Unfortunately, that is pretty much what happened.
The Monday evening prior to his passing, he called and told me he was thinking about going to the E.R. We talked about his symptoms, and he expressed his concerns that he would get hassled there because he was not vaccinated and was never going to be. We talked about urgent care, then about calling our doctor and seeing if she felt a trip there was warranted. I got the on-call number for him, and he made the call. The doctor on call that evening was not our doctor, and Mike did not trust other doctors, as he has had some bad experiences with them.
I learned the next morning that he had not done any of the things we discussed. However he was feeling better, he brought the dogs to me, and went to get a new windshield in Salt Lake. Several times during that week, he mentioned how he would go up the stairs and his chest would hurt, sometimes going away when he rested, other times not. It is of note that he has had chest pain off and on for years, so this did not seem particularly alarming.
On Thursday, he texted that he wondered if he might have pneumonia, and that maybe that was causing the chest pain. He had a long-awaited doctor's appointment on Friday morning, and he was anxious to get in to see her and get some answers about the chest pain and other ailments.
On Friday morning, I woke up to several texts from him, one was a video link to a story about a man finding a stone carved bear in the Uinta mountains, with him saying "a special guest." I hadn't watched it yet, but texted him wondering if he'd ever been sound asleep, only to have Denver scratching so hard that his leg was banging on the bedroom door and scaring me into awakeness? At 8:32 a.m., he replied "yes" to my text. (That turned out to be the last thing any earthly being heard from him. If I'd only known.) I eventually watched the video, seeing that the "special guest" was a man that lived down the street from us and was in our ward in Mapleton. I commented on this, asking if Mike knew who the other man was, because he seemed familiar to me.
I drove up to Ogden to fill out the paperwork for a new car that I was leasing. The car was not there, it was in Las Vegas, but I completed the necessary forms and became "owner" of the car. I texted Mike to ask him how his doctor appointment had gone. Later, when I had not heard anything back, I thought, "Well, he was driving to the doctor, then in with the doctor, and maybe she sent him to a hospital for some tests?" It was not alarming that I hadn't heard because of that thought. But as the day wore on, and there was no word, especially nothing about what the doctor may have told him, I began to get concerned.
I texted Amy to see if she had heard from him. She said she hadn't, had I? (This is something we've done many times in the last 18 months, so even this was not alarming.) I told her about the morning, the doctor appointment, the chest pain during the week, and no response throughout the day. She called and texted him without response, then said she'd get in touch with her sisters to see if either of them had heard from him. When they said they hadn't, and I explained about the thought that maybe he was at a hospital having tests done, she began calling hospitals to see if he might be at one. I also said that the police could do a welfare check.
After some back and forth, with me being the only one with a key to his home, but living the furthest away, Amy said that Melissa and Joey were going to head down there, as they were the closest. They had the garage code and could get in if needed. Amy and I kept talking, trying to figure out what might be happening, beginning to worry. After about 45 min., Melissa and Joey discovered that the code they had did not work. Amy had called the police, and they were there, getting no answer from their pounding on the door, etc. This had now been more than 90 minutes that we were trying to figure things out.
We then learned that the police were able to see that his car was in the garage, which made all of our other ideas completely moot. Our hearts began to sink. This was so not good.
As the possible reality began to sink in, we started to cry, but were still holding onto the slightest bit of hope that maybe he was too sick to answer the phone or door. I offered to drive down with the key, but then remembered that Mike had given me the garage code by text awhile ago. So I began scanning my texts (it did not show up on a search), meanwhile the fire department had come as well. I scanned and scanned and scanned, for probably 20 or more minutes, and finally found it, just as the police were going to break a window to get in.
With the code, they got into the home, and as we waited to hear, it seemed to take forever to learn anything. Amy and I both felt as though we were going to throw up. Every minute that passed seemed like a week. The police had made Melissa and Joey stay downstairs while they went to investigate.
Then Melissa called me and very calmly said, "The police found him deceased."
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
That seemed to be the only word I had in my vocabulary, and I think I said it a thousand times. NO, no, no, this could not be real. The very thing I have worried about for so long had just come to pass.
Amy was still at work in Lehi and Aubrey was with Amy's children at Amy's house in Saratoga Springs. Amy did not want to tell Aubrey what had happened because she didn't want to have Aubrey learn of it right in front of the children. She called the boys' dad and asked if he could come get the children, then she would tell Aubrey. Aubrey's husband Forrest drove the two of them down there, but I was stuck in Draper all alone.
I got in my car, remembering that I had not put gas in earlier, which is not usual for me. I don't let it get near empty because I don't think it is safe, if there's ever an emergency. But there it was, nearly empty. I have a 7-11 very close by, and as I waited for the signal light to turn, I was sobbing great big heaving sobs in my car. I have no idea if anyone saw, but I could not control any of this.
I got to the gas pump and had a thought to call my sister, Colette, to tell her what had happened. She told me to go back home, that she was coming to get me. I had the dogs with me, so I walked them near my house, all the while sobbing. My world had just been turned upside down and was shook around, and I did not know what to do. Finally Colette and her husband Cory arrived, we piled into my car with Cory at the wheel, got gas, and headed down there.
The police were in the parking lot, and as I entered Mike's home, there was a policeman in the kitchen. I had no idea why, but one of my thoughts was that I, the ex-wife with the big insurance policy, might be suspect. I watch too much Dateline and know how these things sometimes go. But at this point, I didn't care why he was there, I just wanted to be with the family as we tried to make some sort of sense out of all of this.
There was a man in a white shirt and tie, standing in the living room. I asked if he was Mike's bishop, as I knew the girls had tried to reach him too to see if he could check on Mike. He said no, he was the funeral director. A very kind, soft-spoken man. The police said it appeared that Mike had been kneeling at his bedside, praying. We talked about going up to see the body. None of the girls wanted to see, but I felt like I needed to, and I wanted the dogs to have an opportunity to have some idea what had happened. I had been warned that there was "some discoloring" of his face.
Well, I work in hospice. I see plenty of deceased people, and I've seen pale skin with areas that look like bruising, so I wasn't alarmed. My sis and her husband climbed the stairs with me, and there he was, lying on the floor next to the bed, with a sheet over him. This was all so very surreal. Completely incomprehensible to me. I uncovered his face and saw that his skin was very, very dark, something I wasn't prepared for as I have never seen or even heard of that.
I let the dogs sniff around a bit, hoping they could put the pieces together and realize that Dad was no longer alive. They LOVED Dad! Especially Murphey, who would almost completely ignore me when Mike was present. He was All. About. Dad. This was heartbreaking to me. These pups have spent half their life at Dad's house and their world all changed then too.
I have this sense of waiting, waiting to have Mike get in touch with me to fill me in on all that has gone on. We were always sharing the details, and even though my brain knows this will not happen, I still "feel" that way. He used to travel to Europe for writing seminars, and I'd wait for him to call after the long plane ride, getting transport to the hotel, etc. No cell phones back then, so it was sometimes a long, long wait. I waited for two years while he was serving a mission. Yes, I got weekly letters, but still it was a whole lot of waiting. Prior to marriage, we never lived anywhere near one another, and it was always waiting, waiting, waiting for the next time we could be together. I have become more familiar with "waiting" than I wish I was. This is a waiting that could go on for decades.
I don't know what the future will look like. I have to take it one day at a time. I am so heartbroken that I have a tough time concentrating. I have about a dozen patient visits to chart at the moment, but it is so hard to focus. I know that time will ease some of the intensity of the pain; I also know that time does not heal a broken heart or the grief that we feel at the loss of a loved-one. We simply learn to live with the loss. "Closure" is a myth. The way we humans are wired means we will always remember our loss. Sometimes, years down the road, there will be a trigger, and the tears will start. I see it all the time with the people I visit and the grief groups that I facilitate.
Life will go on. The world will continue to turn. There will be happy days and profoundly sad days. His birthday is barely over a month away. Then Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. Then New Year's, and on and on. I really can't think that far ahead, so I don't. I feel reasonably certain that I will make it through tomorrow though. And that is what I can do.
Farewell my love. Farewell. Until we meet again . . . .
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