{"id":34680,"date":"2021-11-27T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T08:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=34680"},"modified":"2026-06-06T11:40:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:40:31","slug":"widowed-as-he-lay-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/widowed-as-he-lay-dying\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: As He Lay Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"as<\/a>
A few months before he died, a very healthy Jon helped hang the vintage quilt<\/a> we received as a wedding gift. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What was Jon thinking as he laying dying?<\/p>\n

It breaks my heart to imagine it.<\/p>\n

It wearies me. Yesterday, it took a cup of tea, followed by a cup of decaf, followed by a shower to rally the energy and courage to write this post, which I’d been contemplating all week:<\/p>\n

What was my husband thinking, feeling as he lay in that hospital bed, struggling to breathe?<\/p>\n

Grief’s Many Parts<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Grief has many parts, I’ve learned over the past nine months. There’s the “I miss my husband. The house is too quiet without him” part.<\/p>\n

And there’s the “What if?” part. What if I could have been in the emergency room with him to press the doctors with questions? What if the doctors hadn’t changed his medications in those last hours before he died?<\/p>\n

And then there is the grandchild part: Our older granddaughter wasn’t quite 4 when she last saw Jon. In the pandemic months that followed, he was just a face<\/a> on Skype, a jolly face, but a two-dimensional one that froze every so often. Will she remember him?<\/p>\n

For the widowed, there are countless ways to feel sad. I could keep on listing them.<\/p>\n

Instead I’ll go straight to the one that haunts me most. And that is — the pity I feel for my dear Jon, the sorrow and pity for the life that was taken from him so abruptly and so capriciously.<\/p>\n

But alongside that pity is an even greater sorrow, the crushing sadness I feel when I realize that Jon, as he lay dying, might have known, guessed, feared that his life was ending.<\/p>\n

Words Were Needed<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I was there when my mother died in the emergency room at Stanford Medical Center in 2010. She looked right at me when I came into the room, but she couldn’t speak. So I stroked her head again and again. Speaking for my brothers and myself, I repeated the words, “We love you, Mom. And we know that you love us.”<\/p>\n

I was pretty sure that those were the words my mother needed to hear and wanted to say as her long life came to an end. So I said them over and over on her behalf.<\/p>\n

But I wasn’t there when Jon died. I couldn’t hold his hand or see his face or say any words for him.<\/p>\n

A folder of certified death certificates sits on my desk. Every once in a while I’ll take one out to mail to an accountant or attorney or government agency. Otherwise, I do not look at the death certificates. They are too real. They break my heart.<\/p>\n

As He Lay Dying<\/strong><\/h5>\n

But one day, a month or two ago, I finally pulled myself together to take a closer look at the death certificate. Maybe there would be a small, important detail waiting to be revealed. If so, I didn’t want to miss it.<\/p>\n

And there it was:\u00a0“Cause of death. Pulmonary embolism.”<\/p>\n

I knew that.<\/p>\n

But next to it was: “Time Interval Between Onset and Death: 1 HOUR”<\/p>\n

I hadn’t known that.<\/p>\n

One hour? A full hour had passed between the time Jon began gasping for breath and a crew of doctors rushed to resuscitate him — and the moment his heart beat for the last time?<\/p>\n

Did Jon know he was dying — for an entire hour?<\/p>\n

I will stop writing now. That’s enough for today. Enough for me. And probably enough for you as well.<\/p>\n

No, Jon did not suffer for an entire hour. Here’s what a young ER doc has to say about that: “Widowed: Did He Die in Anguish?”<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 . . . Some more stories about Jon at “Jonathan Newhall, My Husband of Forty-Four Years.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also at “Lucky Me, I Told Jon Newhall I Loved Him.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"as<\/a><\/p>\n

I wasn’t in the hospital when Jon died. I couldn’t hold his hand or say any words as he lay dying. Did he know his life was coming to an end?\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,14],"tags":[187,34,188,191,434,29,2419],"class_list":["post-34680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","category-widowed","tag-death","tag-dont-miss","tag-dying","tag-grief","tag-hospital","tag-jon","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49400,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34680\/revisions\/49400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}