On the way home from that appointment I asked Kyle what he wanted to do. Second opinion? Alternative medicine? He looked at me and said, ‘I’m tired.’ That was when I knew it was time to stop. It was time to let him rest. He knew the fight was over and he was relieved to have the doctor tell me so he didn’t have to. If I had pushed he would have kept going, because that’s who he was and that’s how much he loved me. But now it was time to stop. It was time for me to let him go on his own terms.
The day before Kyle passed was a really good day. It was a day that gave me back some hope. He was feeling better. We had gotten him a wheelchair and I had taken him on a walk – I hit the curb and almost dumped him and he joked about my inability to drive even a wheelchair! He sent Dest to the gas station three times that day to get a Polar Freeze because he was craving them all day! It was a beautiful day.
The next morning he woke up and wasn’t feeling good. I assumed it was all the excitement from the day before, but as the day wore on he got worse. By late morning, I called our in-home care nurse. When she arrived, she let me know it was most likely time. I sat next to him on our bed that afternoon and never left. We called our family and close friends. The kids and I surrounded him and let him know how much we loved him; the last words he ever said to us were, ‘I love you too.’ We had his favorite songs playing in the background and hockey was on TV. We sat around him telling stories that made us all laugh and cry. But mostly we were just grateful for all of the time we had been able to spend together.
My incredible husband of 15 years took his last breath around 9 p.m. that night, surrounded by our kids (the gremlins), our family, and our closest friends. I don’t let myself think about that night too often because the pain is too much. A couple days before he passed, Kyle had decided he wanted to get each of the kids something special, just from him. He took the girls to our local jewelry store and let them each pick something out, something they’d always have. He had a baseball bat inscribed for Cohen that says, ‘For letting me see the joy every time you played, Love Dad.’ He wanted them to have something to remember him. Kyle’s biggest fear was that the kids wouldn’t remember him and it is now my life’s mission to make sure that never happens.
It has been 10 months since our world changed forever. Our journey of learning how to live again has been filled with the most amazing love and support from our family, friends, and even strangers. We are still healing, but I think we always will be. We talk about Kyle – Dad – every single day, whether it is what we think he would say about a particular situation or just a ‘Hey, remember when Dad…’
