Hey there! You might be visiting this site for a number of reasons. Hopefully you find me entertaining/interesting enough to stick around. So I’m gonna dive right in. My name is Amber and I recently joined the widow’s club. A club nobody wants to join. Well, I guess I can’t speak for everyone. There are people out there would want their husband to drop dead or made it happen. Hopefully they are either divorced, or in jail. Wow, I’m already getting sidetracked. Anyway..
His name was Kyle. We were together for 6 years.
Or 321 weeks, 2253 days, 54,048 hours, or 3,242,925 minutes.
We survived being insanely broke in NYC, adopting 2 dogs together, the passing of one of the dogs, buying a house, and then cancer. B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Well, he didn’t survive the cancer. Thats where our story ended. It was 12:45am on October 28th, 2016. He suffered a stroke after battling a respiratory infection. One of the deadliest things a chemo patient can acquire. The song “Mr. Cellophane” had just finished playing from his favorite playlists labeled “Musicals”. I’ll explain why thats important later. October 19th was the last day I saw his eyes open, heard his voice, and was assured that he would be his strongest. It was also my birthday. He had setbacks before. C-diff, cryptococcus, and Klebsiella pneumoniae to name the major ones. When I spoke to him on the 19th, I had this feeling that it would be the last. It felt different this time, and I was truly scared. I told him I loved him and that he was the love of my life. He said the same and was intubated shortly after.
We were married for 28 days. On the 29th day, I was picking out which coffin he would be buried in. I was deciding which readings would be used for a funeral. A funeral that would be held at the same church where we vowed to love each other all the days of our life. It was unreal.
I told Kyle that I hope that I go first because I can’t imagine living life without him. I would curl up in a ball in a dark corner and never want to move. Life would not be worth living without him.
And yet, here I am. Although I had days where I didn’t get out of bed till way past 2pm, and I’m pretty sure I soberly blacked out the first week after he passed- I was still here. As I closed out 2016 with my newly acquired sisters and brother (in-laws, but much more than that), I made a promise to find my new purpose in 2017. Losing your significant other to cancer changes you. And when they die, a piece of you also dies. I didn’t realize that at first. So now I’m going to make lemons into lemonade and it starts with this blog.
