I am grateful

A few people have shared their condolences about Pat’s death by saying things like, “You have had so much misfortune” or “you have had been given so much to endure.” File these statements under the unhelpful thing to say category. More than that, such expressions of grief are not how Pat or I viewed our circumstances. Pat was grateful for his life, even as he was dying of cancer. This was not denial or delusion, he always considered himself fortunate.

This might make some sense with more context: multiple myeloma was not his first experience with illness or even death.

At age 23, Pat was celebrating the new year and the wedding of his friends Brett and Melinda Boddicker in Colorado when he collapsed on a mountain during his first (and last) time skiing. That fateful day he would learn he suffered from a congenital heart defect called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Severe tachycardia caused Pat’s heart to stop at least once, and he was clinically dead for several moments. He only survived because he was on a mountain where the EMTs had access to a defibrillator, back in 1990, AEDs were not installed in public places the way they are now. He would have died had he not been on that mountain.

Pat viewed himself as a mystical creature who had returned from the dead: a revenant. Revenant comes from the French word, revenir, to come back.

While the surgery that saved his life left no scars, being given last rites in his 20s most assuredly altered him. I did not know the Pat before he became a revenant, but his friends and family all said he was never the same after Colorado. He stopped smoking cigarettes and using weed, he became more serious and focussed. His parents and sisters of the two Pats: the Pat before and the after “the accident.”

Life was too precious, too fragile, and he was keenly aware he had been granted a second chance. He was also destined to leave Ireland.

Pat told me about his being a revenant on our first date, and to be sure, I did not know what to make of his intensity and the fact that someone so young had such a keen sense of mortality.

And so, I return to this moment. After Pat was diagnosed with cancer, he told me he could accept dying, after all, he had done it once before. He forced himself to be grateful for the 30 more years he had been given, the children and family and career that would have been lost to him forever on that mountain if things had been slightly different.

Pat and I extended that radical sense of gratitude to our lives after Cal’s diagnosis. We trained ourselves to be thankful for things most people hardly ever noticed. We were happy when Cal could sleep through the night or could breathe without difficulty or we did not have to spend the holidays in the hospital. Pat was grateful for every time he watched his kids play soccer and basketball and run cross country. MLD could not diminish the fact that the world was a better place because Cal was in it. We had this split-screen sort of existence: We could despise MLD and still be grateful for Cal just the way she was.

As for me, when the grief tries to swallow me up, the only thing that staves off the pain is focussing on being grateful for Pat and the life he granted me. You see, I had 28 years with a man possessed of such character that he taught me how to be brave and generous. I spent more than half my life with a man who loved me so very much that no matter how old or fat or sad I became, he only saw the pretty brown-eyed, half-Greek/ West Indian girl from Boston he was charmed by one day in Chicago.

As someone who has written papers and books about marriage and family, I am keenly aware of how rare it was to find a happy partnership.

My time with Pat was not merely a happy marriage.

In Pat, I had found someone to love me in a way that made me feel beautiful and smart and worthy of love for the first time in my life. I got to spend 28 years with a man who loved our family with such a passion that he willingly sacrificed himself to care for us. This was a man who would get up every morning, even as he was dying, and make me a cup of tea first thing in the morning. Then he would go to bed at night and say “being in this bed with you is the best part of my day.” He would sing songs to me and puzzle out ways for me to shine and be the finest version of myself. In 28 years, he has never diminished me.

So, please don’t pity me and my children. Camille, PJ and Cal understand how fortunate they are.

It is true that Pat left us too soon, but, not everyone gets to share their lives with someone so extraordinary that he has the power to make the potential he sees within you come to life.

If you have never had someone in your life that makes you feel this way, I can only hope you will one day. You have no idea what you are missing.

And, my biggest worry now is how do I go on and still be myself without Pat in our lives.