I remember how happy Dean was all week long, not able to contain his football frenzy.
It was like he had reached his pinnacle. He had his board exam passed and in the bucket ready to move on at work and the MN Vikings were in the final playoff game against the PHL Eagles. Dean was so excited and full of purple pride for his team hoping for a win to the Super Bowl. As fate would play out, the Eagles won that day, taking home a Super Bowl win to follow. Dean and his buddies were just at a Viking playoff game in MN the weekend before. Interestingly, in the same weekend after a funeral of my own uncle who had also passed. He and his buddies even spoke about a splurge to the Super Bowl if the Vikings would win as the game would be played in Minneapolis, his hometown. Dean even spoke of getting rid of one of his games that day, the same game where he would be the sole referee. He mentioned just the day before in our car ride to the airport that he was thinking of cutting back as the years of the game had begun to take a toll. In the end, he never did get rid of that game and it would be this very same game he would never win.
Or did he?
I would later find out, Dean’s phone was locked. No one could reach me. This is why they tried the home line and not my cell. If they could have I would have never left Dallas. I would have been able to go back to Phoenix right away. Instead it took all day, nearly nine hours later before I would receive the devastating hit. Now – I encourage everyone to make sure they have an emergency contact on their phone. So even if it’s locked someone can still be reached in an emergency. Dean had the capability on his phone. But never set it up. I didn’t either. Until now.
Once I got word, my phone began to light up. Jim the GM, gave me the hospital contact for the Physician. Donor Network was calling immediately, upon me getting the news as we are both listed as donors in their system. After all ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Both of us have always felt in the end, it doesn’t matter how you get there. So you might as well try and help someone else along the way. Yet not having full information. I wasn’t ready to respond. I mean, I wasn’t even home from my trip yet. Still, the clock was ticking if Dean was going to try and offer hope of life to someone else. Still I needed more information, in case I would need to do an autopsy.
Some Dreams Really Do Come True.
Looking back I sought signs and clues to what could have happened.
Oddly enough, I believe our Soul knows it journey. At some point between the time of the puck hit and Dean’s death, I was home from a trip and awoke so troubled one morning I even had a tear in my eye and felt a state of panic. Once fully alert I was so thankful to realize it was just a dream. Dean was getting ready for work in our master bathroom when I shouted out to him that I had a dream. A dream that he’d died. I don’t recall the details, I just remember I was up so upset. Staying in sync, he simply stopped what he was doing and came over to me still lying in bed and gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek and just said: ”I’m not going anywhere, babe,” and went about his day.
I have heard 15% of our dreams are pre-cognitive with reference of future experiences of the dreamer. I have also heard that dreams of death aren’t so much as foretelling death as they are giving closure to something or recognizing an end to something.
Dean had his MBA in sports marketing and worked with several teams over the years from the MN Twins and Florida Panthers to the now Arizona Coyotes, our reason for a move to Arizona. Then on to the Arizona Diamondbacks. In his last five years of his life on this earth he would work with Charles Schwab, where he completed all of his series exams, studying what seemed to be all the time. And finally, on November the 13th, not even two months before he himself would pass, he passed the CFP Board exam for Certified Financial Planning. First try, too. He was so over the moon to finally be done. No more studying. He would also earn a one month sabbatical for his five year milestone with the company. A much needed break he never got to take. His hopes and dreams of being made partner as a portfolio consultant with Charles Schwab would soon fade. It was like he reached his pinnacle, finally finished to settle in for the remainder of his working career. It all looked good on paper. December would come and go.
A new year would turn, but for Dean, the page went black.
Instead of exploring the Great Wall of China, as was our hope, I would be sitting in the middle of grief camp, dazed by loss.
In those first grief filled days, surrounded by others sitting in similar sadness, stories poured how they too dealt with death and were trying to cope in their own grief filled lives.
As we united together sitting in a circle I heard one woman speak of losing not just one but all three of her own sons in different ways. Sons that were her own flesh and blood. I recall listening to another young woman whose military husband committed suicide, after having been deployed. Now faced to raise two beautiful boys alone. I recall another lady who lost her own spouse due to cancer.
Overwhelmed by the words I’m hearing, in a state of disbelief on how my own life changed so fast at the loss of my own sweetest husband, gone way too soon and so suddenly, I wanted to run.
At the next break, I wanted to get up and get out and run so fast and so far away and never ever look back. How can this be real? I wanted my sadness and disbelief to end. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. Yet somehow in my tragic truth, only by the Grace of God, I stayed to wait like the others for peace to come.
How cruel to think of the Godforsaken words “Until Death Do Us Part”. What does that mean, “Until Death Do Us Part”? Like we are supposed to just wash our hands of the sacred sacrament I vowed to make 25 years earlier with God as my witness. Just up and walk away, just like that and let go of the one thing, the one person that made my life so filled with joy, so much more meaningful and so much easier because they were in it alongside of me? How could you take this away from me, God? Why would you? What do you want? I’m here. I’m listening. I am devastated. I am broken.
God I trust you, but I don’t like what you’ve given me.
My sword of life is down. My flag is up. I see myself in surrender standing at the foot of the cross hopeless, confused and completely lost. Life used to make sense. Now, my life imploded in a million pieces doesn’t make sense. I use to feel it made some sense. Now my life, like a hurricane has diminished my life into a million pieces of the past. And although the pieces are there they are unable to remain the same.
It’s not humanly possible to just let go of my whole heart’s happiness with the one I signed up to love forever, even though my past, present and future no longer exists.