Losing Pat- October 31, 1966 -April 16th, 2020

Just before 8 pm on April 16th, my husband Pat stopped breathing.

He is gone.

This brilliant and amazing man who loved to garden and sing, watch Liverpool Football and horse racing, play music and sing and cherished his family so fiercely left us. It was beautiful and heartbreaking. I could not bear to leave him, so when the nurse pronounced his death, I asked her to let me keep him with me for four more hours, until midnight.

My children seemed frightened that all I wanted to do was curl up in the bed beside him and cry, my son PJ offered to stay with his father and me. I told him he most assuredly did not. My son told Par what he needed to say and then left us in the room. Our son sensed that I needed these moments with Pat.

So, I lay in bed with my husband and kissed him and held his hand and played music for him.

I told him the thing he never let me say to him when he was living, “You are the love of my life, absolutely irreplaceable. I will never get over this.”

We have been inseparable since our first days of graduate school in fall 1992.

We met in September, started dating in October and were engaged (secretly) by Christmas of the same year. It was nearly love at first sight. We were married for 26 years, and, as more than one person has pointed out to me, “Not many of us get to have someone like Pat in our lives.” It was true, I was so fortunate. But now that he is gone, it is an amputation of sorts. And I must force myself to be grateful for the time we had and our children and our family.

I am so sorry for those of you who did not have the chance to say goodbye. When our daughter Cal was diagnosed with a fatal, degenerative disorder, he embraced everything about caring for a terminally-ill child. He granted her all his miracles . It was his great privilege in life to help other children and families impacted by leukodystrophy.

To say our lives feel smaller and diminished at his departure barely touches our heartbreak.

Watching him say goodbye to Cal on Easter Sunday the last day he was strong enough to get out of bed and sit up was beautiful and pure and excruciating. As he held her, our nurse and friend Renee, had to leave the room since the emotion of it all was just too intense.

Pat was not religious, but, it is impossible to believe such a force could simply vanish. We miss him terribly. I told him he could leave because we would be okay, he died just an hour after I said he could go. I was lying, I don't really believe it, but since I told him so, I feel obligated to make it be true.

Here is the video of Cal and Pat we made a few days before his death, when he was still strong enough to hold her on his lap. Pat said very little as we was dying. Partly this was because the chemo had left his voice hoarse and weak, but it was also because my husband’s stoicism compelled him to say very little about his feelings. Our conversations were succinct and practical. “Please could you get me some breakfast?”

“Don’t forget to enroll the children on your health insurance plan if I die, you will only have until the end of the month.”

“What day is it?”

And the last thing the man said to me was “I want to take a piss.” When I told him it was unsafe to leave the bed and use the toilet, he tried to wrestle me to get out of the way.

It was holding our daughter Cal a few days before his death when he allowed any real emotion, and even that came to us in pure silence and in his eyes there is so much anguish and love. After we lifted Cal out of his lap, he seemed lost in thought, I was scared but I asked him “What’s on your mind my love?” And he answered, “I just wonder what the future holds.”

I reminded him, “You have done everything to protect us and care for us, we will be okay. Try not to worry. You have done all that you could do for us.”

And he went to the bed and offered no response to my reassurances.

Here is the video of Cal and Pat together.