Rest in Peace, Bruce. I've got this.

On December 7, 2005 Shelby’s dad , my fiancée suddenly.  Shelby was 10 weeks old that day.  The day before was his day off, and he spent it with Shelby and for some reason the night before, he decided he was going to take one more day off to spend with her.

Bruce woke me up around 5 a.m. with horrible pain in his arm.  I asked if he wanted me to call an ambulance and he said he didn’t know.  I should have called one then.  After a few minutes the pain subsided enough to calm down and the worst of it was in his hand, at the base of his thumb.  We both calmed down and blamed it on a pinched nerve.  However, every minute or so he would double over in these horrible spasms of pain, but he swore it was only in his hand and arm.  I was going to take him to the immediate care center.  He was on his way to the garage and I was dressing Shelby.  She was crying, raging about being awake so early.  He kissed her and told her he was sorry and that he loved her.  Within a minute, he was dead.  I heard the crash in the garage and found him was tangled up in a cart, the old style TV tray holder thing, and I couldn’t get him out of it to start CPR.  The medics and firemen even had a rough time, had to pretty much rearrange the garage to get to him.  They took him to Community Heart Hospital, but I think they got permission to stop trying shortly after they left my neighborhood, since I heard the sirens stop as they were going across 238 to get to 69.

They told me when I got to the hospital and took me to a room to see him.  It’s not like the movies, where they pull all the tubes out, close the eyes, and tuck them in nicely with a sheet.  He had a tube sticking out of his mouth, his eyes were open, but what struck me the most was the absence of simply him.  I remember thinking “This isn’t even Bruce, it’s just an empty shell.”  My mom was with me.  I brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed him, he was still warm.  He wasn’t scary.  His eyes were at peace.  There wasn’t an ounce of fear in his expression, just peace.  The same look of peace that was in his eyes when I found him in the garage.  I had to be interviewed by the coroner and all that, and went to see him again after that, alone.  I just held his hand and told him how sorry I was that I didn’t call an ambulance, that if I had, he may have gotten another chance.

When I got back home, my house filled up immediately with neighbors cooking food, making coffee, making runs to the store, cleaning, and even cleaning up the mess the paramedics made in the garage.  Friends and family started showing up.  All I could do was sit on the couch clutching Shelby and calling everyone I knew.

It was so clear and so cold.   The sky was amazing.  I remember my mom saying “What a beautiful day to die.”  It’s weird what you remember.  Shelby spent a lot of time in her swing that day, it was the only place she was comfortable that day, I think everyone’s pain and anxiety was too much for her, she felt it when she was being held.  The swing played music.  To this day, if I hear the Fisher Price fishy swing music playing, it instantly takes me back to the day Bruce died.  It was like, this awful background music to that horrible day.  That, and the ringtone on my cell phone.  How weird.

Eventually I decided it was time to get out of my sweats and get in the shower.  I went into my room to get some clothes and be alone for a minute.  I was so cold, and my head hurt so bad.  I just sat on the side of the bed, still not believing that this was happening to me.  Worse, I couldn’t believe this was happening to Shelby.  For some reason right then I felt the most overwhelming feeling, like a blanket of reassurance, and I knew it was God.  And I knew that somehow I was going to be okay.  No, the pain didn’t lessen at all.  But I just knew that I was going to make it, not to be scared, and that I wasn’t alone.  Right then and there I handed it all over to God.

A few months before Bruce died he started counseling with a pastor, he accepted God in his life, the pastor told me, and we started going to church.

Later, in talking with another pastor, I realized something.  The pastor even used this in one of his sermons later.  I think that what I felt was the same feeling Bruce got when he died.  I saw it in his eyes when I found him.  He wasn’t scared, and he knew he was going to be okay.  He was at peace.  He was going home.

According to the coroner’s report, he had a lot going on, mostly stemming from the heart defects he was born with and had repaired throughout his childhood.  It’s amazing to me that in the last year he was alive, he got everything he dreamed of.  He got his house, he got a dog, and he got a little girl.  People asked me if I was mad at God.  I even had a “friend” tell me that this was God’s punishment because we weren’t married and yet we were living together and had a child.  But I keep going back to the peace in his eyes and the blessings he received, from the small ones, to the miracle of his daughter and the miracle that he lived long enough to see her.  No, there was never any anger towards God, not the slightest.  I have only been grateful for the time He gave all of us together.