Dwelling on death, on the way to work

By now I am quite used to waking up alone by myself. Dragged myself out of bed and got on with my morning routine after another night of much tossing and turning. It’s been more than a year without her. But I have spent ½ my lifetime with her by my side so forgive me if I am slow in adjusting to this so-called “new normal”, which pretty much sucks.

Lately I have been reading a blog site (“Life without T”) I had discovered quite by chance. It was put up by a middle-aged American who have lost his wife of more than 20 years. She died rather suddenly of a heart attack at home. It was a devastating shock to him and his two children, needless to say.

Another blog site (“Diary of a Widower”) that captivated me was started by a guy from Holland. His was also a tragic case of sudden loss.  His wife was killed in a road accident when her motor-bike was knocked down by, of all people, a careless police-officer.

I am not sure what triggered that turmoil in my mind this morning. But it led me to dwell for some time about the differences in circumstances of how our spouses had died – me and the other unfortunate widowers in those grief sites that I have been following. It happened shortly after I had driven out from the estate on the way to office.

Jenny’s last days were spent on a hospital bed. Her eye-lids could barely open and all her remaining energy was directed at drawing in air into her deflating lungs that were badly ravaged by the infection she caught 2 days before, tormenting her already cancer stricken body.  She was lying in that semi-conscious state for several hours since the early morning, all the while gasping and breathing heavily. We could not be sure if she was aware of our presence at her bedside. And when her final moment arrived, there was a short pause in her breathing and with that last exhalation sounding more like a reluctant sigh of resignation, she gave up the fight and yielded for eternal peace.

So which is the kinder end?  This inevitable departure from the physical world that no one can escape from. Sudden cardiac arrest or near instant death caused by some fatal road accident or a slower but eventual transition through illness? I would never know. Which is more traumatic or brutal, to the dearly departed and also the loved ones left behind. Death will surely visit us one day. We could only pray that when the time comes, the experience will be gentle and less punishing.

But dwelling on Jenny’s last moments this morning had me reduced to tears. I was babbling like a child even as I was steering the car out to merge with the relentless traffic flowing on the expressway. Not for the first time have I been so emotionally struck over Jenny’s tragic fate while commuting to and fro of work. Morning has never been the best time of day for me.  But it helped that the heavy peak hour morning traffic meant that I could not drive too fast.

On one of the grief sites I had visited, the writer had shared a quotation by Ernest Hemingway,

“There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”

I cannot agree more with this legendary novelist.