It Isn’t Sunshine and Lollipops. It’s Death.

I wrote this a while ago for family and close friends. Even as I'm typing this, I'm unsure about posting it for the whole world to see. I couldn't even write it out until about 9 months after he died, and it was very very painful. It still is. But its reality.

WARNING: This is the story of how my husband, my soul mate, died. You may not be up to reading it AND THAT'S OK. You may just not want to read it AND THAT'S OK. You might want details about what happened AND THAT'S OK.

This is the story of what happened the night Dan died. I wanted to write it for myself and thought I would give others the opportunity to read it if they choose (maybe baby girl will want to know someday).  If you don’t want to read it DON’T. IT’S OK. But if you want to know the details here they are.  Maybe it will help give you closure or something.  There is nothing overly gruesome but it is the story of exactly how Dan died which isn’t sunshine and lollipops. It’s death.

Ours was a true love. The stuff fairy tales are made of. Like Cinderella and Prince Charming or Wesley and Buttercup. Our love was forever.

I will start with that day. It was really an uneventful day as far as last days go. There was nothing special or spectacular about it. We went to church. Dan did baby girls hair that morning (he did her hair a lot) in six long braids. At children’s time she was asked who made her hair so pretty and she very shyly said “my daddy did it” after church we drove downtown to meet Justin and Pauline. The crystal ballroom was having a big 100 birthday celebration and my siblings convinced us to go.  It was crowded and loud and we didn’t stay long. We also went to one of those chocolate drinking places and had chocolate. Dan loved it. He loved chocolate. We went to Powell’s and bought baby girl a story book. Then we went and got a cheeseburger. The tiny restaurant was so crowded that I sat on a stool with baby girl on my lap and Dan had to stand up. I remember him rolling his eyes at me, annoyed at the situation.  Dan carried baby girl around about half the day because she was tired of walking.  

Finally we went home.  I don’t exactly remember what happened after that. I believe we watched tv and ate dinner. It was very boring and typical, and unexciting,. We put baby girl to bed. We probably watched some more tv and then went to bed. I don’t remember the last conversation I had with Dan. I don’t remember the last time he kissed me or the last thing he said to me. He generally said something like “goodnight I love you” as he gave me a kiss. In all likely hood that’s what happened, but I don’t remember.

I was asleep maybe ten minutes when the bed started shaking.  His c-pap was making this weird gurgling noise. Kind of like he was choking, kind of like he was breathing funny. I jumped up and ripped the c-pap off his face. Dan was having a seizure.  And then he was done. It was short. Not more then 30 seconds I think. It was smallish, not anywhere near as big as the one he had in the hospital at Thanksgiving or even the one he had ten years ago when we were living in West Linn. In those 30 seconds I thought “o man we are going to have a big fight in the morning, he’s supposed to go to California for work and I don’t think he should go now and he’s going to want to go still”

                And this is where things changed. This is where something was different than any other seizure I’d ever seen him have. Usually when he has a seizure he isn’t “all there” afterwards. He’s pretty out of it. Usually he will roll over and start snoring. Usually I will try to get his attention by pushing on his shoulder and he will throw his hand up and shove me away and continue to snore.  He didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t move. I pushed on his shoulder, he didn’t move, I started talking to him “Dan Dan wake up. Dan Dan” he didn’t do anything. I was starting to get really scared. I pulled open his eyelid and his eye was rolled up in his head. I put my ear on his chest, his heart was beating extremely fast (or was it mine? or both?) I didn’t know what to do.  I ran out to the living room and grabbed my phone and dialed 911. I ran back to Dan and looked at the clock. It said 11:15. There was a voice prompt on the phone that said something like say help if you need help and I said “help help I need help” As I was doing this I was thinking in my head “Dan is going to be so mad at me in the morning, he’s going to say ‘why did you bother calling them Jennifer I was fine. They have real people that need help’ A lady answered the phone and asked me what the emergency was  I told her that my husband had a seizure and he wasn’t responding to me.  She asked me if he was breathing and I couldn’t tell, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. She asked me if I could hear his heart beat. I put my ear to his chest again and I couldn’t tell. I thought I heard it and then I didn’t and then I thought I heard it again. I was crying and I kept saying “Dan Dan” over and over again. She asked me where he was and I said in the bed. She asked me if I thought I could move him down to the floor.  So I pulled on him, I pulled hard on his legs. He fell to the floor with a really loud thump. But he didn’t move at all. She told me to lift his neck up to help him breathe. I put my head on his chest again. Again I couldn’t tell if I heard his heart beating.  I was crying so hard. She asked me if I knew CPR but I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember how.

I ran to the front door to open it for the paramedics. I don’t know how many were there it felt like a lot. They followed me back to the bedroom. Two of them. They got on either side of Dan. One of them kind of shrugged at the other one and they picked him up and carried him out to the living room.  911 was still on my phone so I picked up Dan’s phone and called Melinda. I called Melinda for one reason, Dan and I were going to go to the hospital and somebody had to stay with baby girl. Melinda answered the phone and I screamed at her “you have to come over right now, right now Melinda you have to come over right now”  I don’t think she recognized Dan’s phone number cause she wasn’t sure it was me she said “jenny?” I just said again “you have to come over right now”  The paramedics were working on Dan, but I couldn’t see what they were doing, someone was standing in my way. I was crying so hard I couldn’t really see anything.  A lady paramedic came and led me into the library and sat me in the rocking chair. I sat there curled up in a ball, rocking, crying, and praying “please God please God please fix Dan. Please God Please God please fix Dan” It felt like I did that for hours. I heard the screen door open and Melinda’s voice say “what happened” and then she was on top of me, holding me, and I kept praying for God to fix Dan.  I don’t remember exactly when but the lady paramedic said I needed to call Dans parents and I said “I can’t I can’t call them” and so Melinda did. She said “Dan had a seizure you need to come up here…. They’re here” I guess she was talking about the paramedics. 

The lady paramedic said that Dans heart was not beating well and I said “but it’s beating” and she said NO it wasn’t beating good enough . They were going to try one more thing but they didn’t think it would work.  Melinda asked if we were going to the hospital and the lady said NO we weren’t going to the hospital. That was it. I don’t remember anyone actually telling me that Dan had died. That’s how I knew. We wouldn’t be going to the hospital, it was too late Dan was dead.

The lady asked me if I wanted to see him. I didn’t know if I did but I got up anyway. My whole body was shaking and I was crying so hard I couldn’t see. We walked through the kitchen, I kept saying “this isn’t my life, this isn’t what happens to me” over and over and over again. We got to the doorway of the kitchen and the dining room and I froze. I could see Dan out of the corner of my eye. I was frozen. I couldn’t move anymore. The lady told the other paramedics to tuck Dans arms to his sides, they were straight out, so they did. He was mostly covered with a sheet. Just his head and chest were out.  They lady said I should sit down so I did. I slid down the wall and sat on the floor in the doorway. I just kept saying “this isn’t my life, this isn’t what happens to me” I could see Dan out of the corner of my eye. He was gone.

I don’t remember going back into the library. I think I called my dad. People started to show up. Dans parents and my dad.  Melinda was there.  I wish I would have thought to have everyone come through the garage so they didn’t have to walk past Dan.

At some point I realized that baby girl was still asleep. That baby girl had slept through the entire thing. I had Melinda go check on her. And then I was really worried about her so I went in there too. They were both awake. I don’t know if baby girl woke up when Melinda went in or if she had been awake before that. I don’t know how much she heard or if she heard anything at all. I told baby girl that grandma and grandpa were here and we were going to go see them but we had to play a hiding game first. I picked her up and covered her head with a blanket so she wouldn’t see Dan when we walked by. We went into the library and I sat her on my lap and I told her “sometimes people die because they are really really old like grandpa Leo, sometimes people die because they are really really sick, sometimes people die and no one knows why and that’s what happened to daddy. Daddy died and he is living in heaven now. “ A few tears came out of her eyes and she wiped them away.

The whole thing felt like it took hours and hours. I remember looking at the clock when I called 911 and it was 11:15. Later when I looked at Dans death certificate, his time of death is 12:01. 46 minutes. That was it.

Sometimes I think if I would have called 911 just a minute sooner they could have saved him. Sometimes I think he was gone the minute he had the seizure, he wasn’t there anymore. I will never ever ever be able to fathom why God let this happen. But as angry as I am at Him at the moment, I still believe in Him.

Post Script: I realized after posting this that you may not know Dan had a seizure condition. It started his senior year of high school. It was 100% controlled by medication. He had a seizure about once every 10 years. Really I can tell you every instance and an approximate date. The Thanksgiving before he died he had a small series of seizures and we went to the ER. They told us that he had been on his medication for so long that it was metabolizing in his body too fast and they switched his medication. Then he was fine again. Didn't have a single seizure. Until this night when he died.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle