In Grief and Despair, I Had to Rescue Our Family's Dog

[Celerity]

This writer recounts the unexpected ways she had to support her husband as he dealt with a family tragedy.

https://www.shondaland.com/live/family/a44892737/in-grief-and-despair-i-had-to-rescue-our-familys-dog/



Despite the bottle of champagne I drank before walking down the aisle, I know that my wedding vows contained the phrase “till death do us part.” ​​With the adoring eyes of my loved ones fixated on me and my flowing white gown, I didn’t bother to delve into the fine print. Sure, my own death or my partner’s would be an end to the marital contract, but nowhere did it mention how our relationship might be tested by other deaths before that. What happened to us would bring new meaning to the “worse” in “for better and for worse.”

My husband and I had flown to New York from our home in Scotland just after Easter in 2022. Our plane touched U.S. soil almost exactly 48 hours after we learned that my brother-in-law, Andres, a gregarious chef with a beautiful smile, had, at 27, died unexpectedly in his sleep. Ironically, we had been waiting for a call announcing another death any day — my husband’s father, king of the barbecue who was never without a cold G&T in his hand, had recently been moved to hospice care after a battle with an aggressive, fast-moving cancer. I described this situation as being tied to a track and watching as a freight train crawled toward you to run you over, only for a piano to be dropped on your head. It’s not the perfect analogy, but it did the job in my exhausted state.

Everything felt awful, and my husband was shattered. Since we started dating in 2004 at the tender age of 22, we had done almost everything together. But now he was on a journey that I couldn’t follow. The shock had gripped him fiercely; there were moments of levity when he would forget what had happened, only to be plunged back into deep grief. His sadness — the hitch in his voice when he spoke, the shuddering in his chest, the heaving of his sobs — couldn’t be fixed or solved, at least not by me.

I did what I could. I took care of the morbid practicalities that surrounded us with one death to contend with and a second imminent. And because we are a Latino family, I socialized. My mother-in-law’s core group of ladies had descended on the Long Island house earlier that day bearing empanadas and rosaries, like a Venezuelan Sex and the City. I assessed each of them in turn: Consuelo, who had driven up from Dallas, was clearly the Samantha, sloshing around a glass of white wine as she regaled us with an anecdote about lying to her daughter’s college admissions officer about an allergy to secure a better dorm. Carla was the Miranda — professional, dryly hilarious — while my mother-in-law, put-together and demure, was the Charlotte.

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[MLAA]

1. Powerful story.

[Karadeniz]

2. K R