The Widow Judy

This is the first in a rest-of-my-lifetime series: "Tales of The Widow Judy".

On January 24th 2009 my best friend and soulmate Tom died without even a whimper twelve yards from where I sat playing Scrabble on Facebook. He was the healthiest person I knew, the healthiest 65-year-old ANYONE knew, and he was gone in the blink of an eye.

I had a vague inkling getting showered and coiffed was taking longer than usual for him as I started walking back to our bedroom maybe 35-40 minutes after I'd left him putting one foot in the tub. "What's taking you so long to get beautiful today?" I asked.

What an innocent question.

What a horrendous discovery.

He lay having fallen back on the bed from a seated position, arms outstretched, eyes closed, already turning blue. "Oh, my God! TOM! TOM!! I think he's dead," I said aloud, my hysteria rising, then I screamed for my daughter Suzy who was at the other end of our ranch-style house. Hearing the utter agony in my voice she ran in and leapt onto the bed straddling Tom and beginning CPR.

I couldn't help but think he looked so pretty, all freshly scrubbed and wearing (every mother's dream) CLEAN UNDERWEAR!! How could that thought have found it's way to my consciousness as I dialed 911 and the unthinkable words left my lips, "Please help me. I think my husband's dead!!" But it did.

I was hysterical, screaming into the phone, relaying the operator's direction to Suzy through decibels I don't believe I've ever reached before, dragging Tom, with Suzy, from the bed to the floor and pleading with him, wailing all the while to, "Come back!! TOM, come BACK!" again and again.

Suzy pleaded too as she worked on him but while his color would pinken just a bit with each effort at mouth-to-mouth the bluish hue would not be denied.

Eight minutes passed and the paramedics arrived. They took one look at him, checked him for electrical activity and, finding none, declared him dead at the scene.

Impossible. Unthinkable. My brain was screaming, "NO! NO! This cannot be." And yet it was.

In Florida when you're 65 you're a KID. He played tennis or softball six mornings a week. He walked. He swam. He exercised in the pool to rock-n-roll music. He wasn't plagued with any of the complaints I or any of our friends bemoaned so loudly and so often.

He planned to live to 100.

This scenario, him dying before me, was one we'd never discussed, never even entertained in our wildest dreams. Yet... here it was unfolding before me as EMS techs, a police officer, the mortuary workers all made it clear, my protestations to the contrary, my dearest darling, my heart of hearts, my beloved goofball was well and truly dead.

Period.

Paragraph.

And the world became a different place.