{"id":34910,"date":"2022-01-15T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T08:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=34910"},"modified":"2026-06-06T10:06:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T10:06:22","slug":"die-in-anguish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/die-in-anguish\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: Did He Die in Anguish?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"did<\/a>
Outside the ER of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, where Jon was taken two days before he died. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She’s a doctor. An ER doctor. But I still think of her as the teenager she once was — a young friend of my daughter who often spent time at our house. I remember her as a studious girl whose long, blond hair spilled over the pages of her textbooks as she sat at our dining room table doing her homework between school and dinnertime. She was serious then and she was serious now, two decades later, phoning to let me know that, no, Jon had not suffered. He did not die in anguish. It was over quickly, she said. Before he knew what was happening.<\/p>\n

The Teenager had read my post of two months ago, “Widowed: As He Lay Dying,”<\/a> and she wanted to set me straight.<\/p>\n

I had written that post awash in anguish of my own: I had just noticed on Jon’s death certificate that a full hour had passed between the time he first struggled to breathe and the moment he died.<\/p>\n

The prospect had brought me to tears — what was going through Jon’s mind for that last hour as he lay dying? Was he afraid? Did he long to say something to me? To his children? Something he had left unsaid?<\/p>\n

The Pulmonary Embolism<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Pulmonary embolisms are not always fatal, said The Teenager over the phone. But when they happen the way Jon’s did — in a hospital, with six doctors at his bedside, unable to save him — it means that the blood clot was massive, and that death was inevitable.<\/p>\n

Jon’s nurse — Jon was in the hospital recovering from a mild stroke he’d suffered two days earlier — told me that my husband had been feeling fine that day. A little confused, but energetic and gregarious. Jon was still Jon.<\/p>\n

But that evening he told his nurse that he didn’t feel well. Soon he had trouble breathing. Then his heart stopped.<\/p>\n

Six doctors and four nurses rushed to his room. They got his heart beating again. It stopped again.<\/p>\n

What Really Happened at 7:22 p.m.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The death certificate states that Jon’s time of death was 7:22 p.m., February 19, 2021. But The Teenager wanted me to know that Jon did not die at that moment: 7:22 was the time a physician had called the time of death. It was the moment that the doctors and nurses attending him finally had to accept that he was gone. Jon’s time of death was not about Jon; it was about his doctors,<\/p>\n

Jon had died in a matter of minutes, The Teenager insisted.\u00a0\u00a0He left very fast. He did not die in anguish. Jon — what made Jon the entity he was — was not there at 7:22.<\/p>\n

“I know that for sure,” she said. “I\u2019ve done those resuscitations. I have laid my hands on patients like this. I have done this job. He was not suffering for that hour. He did not have an hour thinking, \u2018I\u2019m dying.\u2019 That’s not what happened. I promise you.”<\/p>\n

The way Jon died was a gift, she said. And that’s why she had called. “It was a huge gift. I wanted to tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Stopping Him<\/strong><\/h5>\n

So that’s how it was. Jon was alive. And then he wasn’t. There was no stopping him. His time had come. He had lived nearly 80 years — and then he was gone.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t how I thought it would be for us. I thought we had many years ahead of us, plenty of time to say our goodbyes, to utter some words of appreciation. To thank each other.<\/p>\n

But no, Jon’s time was up. His life had had a beginning. A middle. And now it had an end. An unavoidable end. There was some comfort in that.<\/p>\n

Some.<\/p>\n

One gets one’s comfort where one can. And in this case it came from a teenager, a nice girl who did her homework at our dinner table and has since laid her hands on death many times over.<\/p>\n

I was learning how to be OK with getting old — but I thought it would be with Jon. More about aging at “The Shame of Aging.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also at “Anne Lamott on Aging: Drop That Rock.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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

No, Jon did not suffer. He did not die in anguish. It was over quickly, she said. Before he knew what was happening.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[103,187,2555,2556,34,2557,434,29,2558,2419],"class_list":["post-34910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-widowed","tag-aging","tag-death","tag-die-in-anguish","tag-doctors","tag-dont-miss","tag-er","tag-hospital","tag-jon","tag-pulmonary-embolism","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34910","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=34910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49372,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34910\/revisions\/49372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}