The Orange of Mindfulness

For months after my husband’s death, I was having persistent flashbacks to that night and all the events that made it up. 

I can hear the words he spoke in pain and see him holding his chest. I hear him fall to the floor. I remember his face when I found him (those eyes … that turn of the eyes was not my husband … and I know, I know he was gone then–not later, THEN). I recall screaming at the woman on 9-1-1 to get someone here and that my husband was dying. She told me I could do chest compressions, so I did, and the reaction from him was awful. He gurgled and gasped. I kept pushing and pushing and yelling at him that he was not going to leave me that night. He was not! 

I remember running to open the garage door for the paramedics, and then running back to do more compressions and yell some more.

The paramedics moved him to the front room and surrounded him. They did everything–respirator (which can be messy–does anyone ever tell you that?), injections to start his heart, and electric shocks. One police officer kept telling me, “He’s fighting hard,” but I think the officer was buying time. He knew better. 

I asked the officer if I should prepare to go to the hospital–Do I ride with the ambulance? Do I drive myself? What do I do because of COVID?

I remember mostly standing in the corner with my face in my hands, praying and praying for God to save my husband. I remember standing there with my face in my hands, finally praying for God to make his passage sweet, because that was all I could do. I knew.

I heard the words, “I’ve got nothing on the pulmonary artery.” I heard all signs of life drop off after that. Then my friend’s husband, who was the lead paramedic, was holding me as I sobbed.

I went to the garage on that cold January 1. I stood there in my bare feet. My sweet neighbor up the street texted me and asked if she should come down. I texted yes.  

She spent a sleepless night here, on what I later referred to as the sleepover from hell. I managed to get in touch with my son, who was on vacation in Lake Tahoe. (Vacation ruined.) I kept calling him that night, as his friend drove my son and his girlfriend to the airport, just to hear him breathe.

And it goes on….

The orange of mindfulness. So how do you break those flashbacks when they keep popping into your thoughts, at any damn time they want to? Draw your attention back to the present. Note what you feel, smell, see, and hear, over and over until it takes. That’s easier said than done.

One day, utterly sick of the flashbacks, I was sitting at my desk, trying to work. There was an orange on my desk. I was so angry that I dug my thumb deep into the orange. The peel was thick, the juice was sticky (it tasted so sweet when I licked it off my thumb!), and it smelled wonderful. It was a pretty orange. And I was mindful. I knew that orange. 

~ by rebuildingholly on October 12, 2021.