A Date with Life

We all rested through the night. The next morning, it was obvious that Pearl’s condition had taken a turn for the worse, now more than ever. That afternoon I called the doctor, and she came right over. She took Pearl’s vitals, and then she looked at me and said that Pearl’s body was shutting down. She then said, “The family needs to come now.”
Pauline and Maria were already there. The doctor told me that she could show me how to keep the IV going until the rest of the family was able to get to our home. The doctor told me that if I ran into any complications or if it was too overwhelming to handle myself, I could call her.
It was my plan to let Pearl pass at home. Pearl had been in and out of hospitals for the last six months, and I wanted her to be surrounded by as much love as possible and not to die alone. I didn’t want my wife to die in the same setting as my mother—alone in the hospital. At that time, her fighting spirit appeared, and she removed the oxygen from her face. Although she was tired, I believe in that moment, as tracks of blood would come down from her nose, she was also releasing me to focus on living without her. What a warrior!
I thought I had the strength and courage to let Pearl spend her last days at home, but with each moment, my emotional strength weakened, and I could no longer endure watching her fight her final round as she battled for her life. After several hours of watching my bride’s body slowly shut down, and propping her up each time her body went limp, I decided it was time to go to the hospital. Her sisters agreed. So, at about eleven o’clock that night, I called the doctor and requested to take Pearl to the hospital, which she supported.
They did what they call a “code blue”—the ambulance with the light on but no siren. They backed all the way up to our front door and brought the stretcher to the foot of the stairs. The paramedics allowed me to carry Pearl to them.
I found myself remembering my mom at that moment. When I was a junior in high school, I came home from school one day to find my mom needed to be rushed to the hospital. She had been sick for a while, but, on that day, I carried my mom out of the house and put her in my car and drove her to the doctor’s office. They ran their battery of tests and wrote her a prescription and sent us home. By the time we got back home, the doctor’s office was on the phone telling us to rush my mom to the hospital as soon as possible. When I pulled up to the ER, they were outside waiting for us, and the paramedics said they would do the best they could do.
Now here I was in a similar situation where I had to find the strength to embrace the joy of my life in my arms for what would soon be the last time. As I was walking up the stairs, with each step the last year flashed before my eyes. Those moments of joy, the dinner dates, the little disagreements, the deaths of our loved ones, and the birth of our daughter. I fought back tears as I reached the top of the stairs. I began to hear the part of our wedding vows in my mind—“marriage is to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.” It ripped my heart apart knowing that I was now carrying my beautiful bride across the threshold to enter into heaven’s gates as I place her on the stretcher.
The hospital was only three minutes away from our home. After arriving, we all waited in the waiting room until she was situated in her room. We then sat with Pearl until six o’clock Sunday morning. That’s when she took her last breath, and the angels came to usher her home to be with the Lord.