Transforming a Season of Dying into Living
by Kathy Izard
When my husband, Charlie, was diagnosed with a rare disease eleven years ago, we never imagined we would have eleven more years together. Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) was the diagnosis we had never heard of but had crashed into our lives anyway with the force of a ten-car pileup.
As a health and fitness nut, I think Charlie was a more than a little over confident that if you take care of your body, it will take care of you. Heart attacks were simply the natural outcome for people who willingly ordered triple cheeseburgers the size of their head and never got off the couch. But open heart surgery and many other harrowing hospital stays ended up happening even to the guy who only ate grilled chicken and never missed a workout.
SCAD means any artery in your body can split at any time, with no warning, causing a fatal heart attack, stroke or aneurysm. There is no test to predict, no pill to prevent, and no certainty that today won’t be your last. In the early stages of being diagnosed, the only advice doctors could offer was not to lift more than twenty pounds, don’t run or exercise strenuously and try not to be more than an hour away from a major hospital that would have a cardiac catheterization lab. All of that was beyond terrifying and I spent countless sleepless nights watching his chest move up and down searching for proof of life.
OUR SEASON OF DYING
I think of those early years now as our season of dying. Everything in our world felt as if it had shriveled to the tiniest, driest, dust of a life. We shuffled through the slog of each day certain we would end up in an emergency room that night. Even the mildest chest pain (and there were lots of residual stings and stabs) sent shock waves through us both. We were too nervous to plan anything because either it involved being too far from doctors or too close to normal. And our life had become anything but normal. I lived on the edge of being one thin arterial tear away from becoming a widow who would need to begin planning a funeral for my soulmate.
Maybe you have been through your own season of dying. One where a diagnosis left you shattered or an actual death left you grieving in a world that kept spinning. Or maybe even a divorce that made you feel as if the entire world was moving two by two while you shuffled in the single line you never asked to be in.
That season of dying can feel endless, like there can be nothing worse than enduring whatever it is that has dropped you down to the dust.
That season of dying can feel endless, like there can be nothing worse than enduring whatever it is that has dropped you down to the dust.
That is how I felt. Like our lives would never be the same and all I wanted to do was return to the time before I knew that arteries could collapse and hearts could stop.
SOMETHING WORSE THAN DYING
It took years of therapy, reading, and journaling to reframe what had happened to us. But I finally realized that in order to live in this radical medical uncertainty, I had to ask and answer the question, what is worse than dying? Which seemed like an unanswerable question until I realized, there actually is an answer to that question.
What is worse than dying? Living as if you already are.
That is what we had been doing for years. We had been living as if we both were already dead. We had forgotten how to raise our eyes and notice all the wonder in the world. We had decided all those hospital stays and surgeries were a multi-year curse rather than the multi-year blessing that they were.
We had only been asking the question: what if Charlie dies? We never considered the far more important question: what if Charlie lives?
ENTERING A SEASON OF LIVING
Finally, five years ago, we began asking that far more essential question. If he is alive and we are still here together, then what will matter in our time together? And that question began our season of living.
We began making good on our promise to one day spend more time out west and began taking annual trips to Wyoming. We developed a mutual love of fly-fishing, which I understand now is really meditation on water. We hiked trails in national forests and remembered to look up at the majestic Tetons which made it impossible not to notice all the wonder in the world.
And yes, we are frequently much more than one hour away from any hospital but at the same time we are exactly where either of us would want to be if it were our last day. Because that is important as well, not just how Charlie, the patient, wants to live, but how I, the caregiver, want to live. At some point, both of us and all of us, will face our last day. We don’t get a choice in how we die but we absolutely get a choice in how we live.
At some point, both of us and all of us, will face our last day. We don’t get a choice in how we die but we absolutely get a choice in how we live.
As summer approaches, we are about to kick into our best month in our season of living. June is prime time in Big Sky country. There will be white fluffy clouds in the day and endless stars at night. There will be grandchildren we never thought Charlie would live to meet playing in our yard. And there will be moments to just gaze at the mountains remembering how long they have been here before us and how long they will remain after.
Ours is a brief season here. Let’s remember that and live it well.
About Kathy
Kathy encourages women to find their purpose and calling in her What’s Your Whisper? Series.
Read What’s Your Whisper? Inspirational true stories every month on Substack
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Kathy Izard is an award-winning author and speaker who wrote the full story of transforming a season of dying into living in her memoir The Last Ordinary Hour. Kathy’s newest inspirational nonfiction book, Trust the Whisper: How Answering Quiet Callings Inspires Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Grace, comes out this month, June 2024. Kathy believes the Holy Spirit is patiently waiting and whispering to each of us. Learn more www.kathyizard.com