Tag: death

My crash course in funeral planning

Published on by kerrymckim2 Comments

Monday

August 22, 2016

One thing about growing up Boston-Irish is that you are not a stranger to funeral homes. When I smell an abundant amount of flowers, I think of funeral homes.  My Uncle Peter (my father’s brother) used to refer to the obituaries as the “Irish Sports Pages.”   My father always said that his father, my Grandpa Sullivan, had impressed upon him that when someone dies, you must pay your respects.  Unfortunately through the years my family has lost three grandparents, two uncles (including Uncle Peter) and many great-aunts, uncles and friends.  And each time someone died, you paid your respects by attending the wake and the funeral.

Given our ages, Bryon and I did not discuss funerals in great detail except for a two day period where we attended the funeral of a close friend’s father on one day and the funeral of his best friend’s grandfather on the next day.  Bryon was always a party planner.  When we were planning our wedding Bryon was not the stereotypically passive groom.  He was not only involved in the whole process, but he pretty much organized the whole day.  He asked for my input and what I liked and factored that in. So it didn’t phase me when he started making notes for his funeral.  I told him to write it all down but he never did.  I had to rely on my memory because who plans on dying when they are 30?  

My two friends that were with me the previous day (My daughter’s Godmother and her significant other) picked me up midmorning and the three of us drove to the funeral home.  We were all completely exhausted and still didn’t know what had hit us.  We just knew that we had to plan the best farewell party for Bryon.  A farewell party that would be legendary.

I went into the funeral planning process with four major points: Top Gun had to be playing on loop during the wake, St Francis had to be the featured saint when it came to prayer cards and hymns, his best friend had to say a eulogy and it had to be better than his Best Man speech at our wedding and we had to have an open bar reception after the funeral Mass.

At the funeral home we were greeted by the smell of flowers and the undertaker named Nick.  Over the course of the next couple of days, we would start referring to him as Funeral Nick in our conversations because we kept confusing him with our friend Nick.  Funeral Nick had a last name but I was too exhausted to remember it. (Funeral Nick, if for some reason you are reading this, I hope you aren’t offended.  You did a phenomenal job.) Funeral Nick brought us into a conference room, gave us some bottled water and presented us with a binder that was full of funeral planning options.

Over the next several hours, we discussed many of the funeral details.  We had to decide if we wanted a Thursday wake with a Friday funeral or a Friday wake with a Saturday funeral.  We had many people travelling from out of town, some as far away as Florida and Chicago so we opted for a Friday wake with a Saturday funeral.  We discussed the logistics of transporting his body from New York City back to Albany.   We discussed the transportation to the church, cemetery, and the bar that the reception would be held.  We chose the flowers.  We decided how many pallbearers to have.  We decided that obituary would be published in the local paper, The Times Union and his hometown paper, The Saratogian.  We couldn’t have Top Gun playing and a photo slideshow.  We decided that Top Gun was more important so we decided to have photo boards lining the room.  We picked out the sign in guest book and prayer cards. I poured over the binder, making my choices. I would stop and ask my friends for their input.  The three of us had a good idea on what Bryon would have liked.

Then it was time to pick out the casket. Funeral Nick showed all my options on a projector.  I felt like I had just been kicked in the stomach.  I was picking out the box that was going to hold Bryon’s bodily remains forever.  Bryon’s body was going to go into this box and this box was going to be buried underground forever.  This was and continues to be the most surreal moment of my life.

Bryon’s law partner (and close friend and Godfather to our daughter) showed up at the funeral home and it took the four of us, plus Funeral Nick to write his obituary.  I have spent many times looking at obituaries for my job and as part of my genealogy research.  I knew that these words were to sum up his life.  How we portrayed Bryon in the obituary would be set in stone for the rest of history.  This would be the document that our daughter and her children and grandchildren will read to try to learn about the person Bryon was.  We had the responsibility to choose these words carefully.  We spent at least an hour making sure everything was worded properly and that we include all aspects of his life.  We finally had a piece that we were satisfied with and it was immediately published on the funeral home’s website and sent it to the newspapers.

We left the funeral home in the middle of the afternoon.  We knew we had another important task the next day.  We would be picking out the cemetery plot.

 

The first few hours after

Published on by kerrymckim6 Comments

Sunday, August 21, 2016

8:35 am

My husband had just been declared dead.  I quietly sat in a chair on his right while the doctors were finishing up.  Our friend (and Godmother to our daughter and like a sister to me) was sitting on another chair in the corner of the room.  We were told to go to the waiting room so they could clean him up.  We could come back and see him before they take him to the morgue.  My friend and I went out to the waiting room where her significant other was waiting.  We knew we had to let people know about my husband’s death.  My husband worked in politics so my friends made sure that the proper people knew of his death.  I decided to make calls to my family and friends.  I wanted to make sure everyone close to us knew before the news of his death started to appear on Facebook.

My first call was to my father.  It was his birthday.  I had made sure to wish him a happy birthday on his Facebook wall at midnight because I knew my first call of the day to him was going to be telling him that Bryon was dead and I wanted to say happy birthday before he got that news.  I had asked my father to call our relatives so they knew.

I called our close friends.   Every call started the same, almost as if I was a robot.  “Hi, it’s me. I was calling to let you know that Bryon passed away this morning.”  Almost everyone, if not everyone, started to cry or seemed shocked.  Bryon came close to dying many times in those five months but always seemed to bounced back.  I think everyone wanted to believe that he was going to bounce back.  I know I did.  I continued to make each phone call in a robotic manner.

I was surprised at how easy it was to make phone calls but I know now that I was in some form of shock. Before my husband died, I always thought that being in shock was a mental state where one couldn’t function at all and that there was some level of not believing the current situation.  At the time, I did not think I was actually in shock.  I was functioning.  I fully understood that his body just couldn’t take it anymore.  It had been a long five months and I had been staring at all his numbers on the monitor.  I knew from the numbers he had over the previous three days that he wasn’t going to bounce back.  For five months, I knew that this was a possible outcome and I thought I was prepared for it, but you are never truly prepared for it.

After the nurse cleaned him up, I was allowed to go back to his room.  As I walked into his room, I was taken aback at how still and quiet it was.  The beeping machines that had been working and monitoring his vitals had been shut off.  They were no longer needed.  After 5 months, Bryon finally looked like he was at peace.  I sat to the left of him and just looked at him.

My friend and I decided to say a Hail Mary.  We cried through it.  Then the priest came by.  A member of the pastoral care staff had tried to contact him while he was saying morning Mass and the priest scolded me for the interruption.  I remember saying “I am sorry my husband didn’t die at a more convenient time.  I did not know you were saying Mass and I really could do without the attitude right about now.”  I have never snapped at a priest like that before.  Let’s hope my grandmother never finds out that I talked to a priest like that.

Earlier that morning when the nurse sent me out of the room to clean him up, I thought I wouldn’t need to come back. I had just spent the last 3 days sitting in his room as I watched him actively die.  The death felt so final.  I didn’t think I needed any extra time but when I went into the room, I found that I needed to just look at him.  I remember thinking about how I was never going to kiss him again or feel his embrace.  I was never going to hear him tell a funny story.  He had been a person that was so full of life and now he was gone.  I didn’t want to leave him.  The next time I would be seeing him, he would be in a casket.

His nurse was waiting for hospital transportation to come and take him to the morgue.  I began to feel anxious.  What if the transporters don’t arrive?  What if his body gets lost?  I felt like I needed to stay there to make sure he got moved to the morgue.  I had spent the past five months monitoring his care and needs.  Was his test done?  What were the results? Has the specialist seen him?  Did he get his medicine?  Does he want to change the channel on the TV?  For the past five months, I had to have my cell phone fully charged and by my side.  One time I dropped my daughter off at daycare and I had left my phone in car and had a panic attack when I got back to the car and I had realized that I had left my phone there.  What if something happened to Bryon and they were trying to get ahold of me?   I came to the realization that it was just his body. The life was gone from his body and he no longer needed me to monitor every move.  It was time for me to go back to Albany. It was time to go home and see my daughter.  It was time for me to go home and plan his funeral.

As I walked out of the ICU, I stopped by the team of his doctors who were rounding on another patient.  They all stopped when I approached and just looked at me sympathetically.  I thanked them for taking care of my husband and told them that I knew they did everything they could.

It was late morning when I walked out of the hospital like I had every day for the past 5 months.  The only difference was this time I was walking out of the hospital for the last time.  And it was without him.

The Beginning

Published on by kerrymckim35 Comments

You could say that my story began on August 30, 1978 at 7:55 am at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston because that is when I entered this world.  It was the beginning of my childhood in the Boston area with my Irish-Catholic family.  My childhood was pretty ordinary, filled with bike rides, Barbies and games of tag and hide and go seek.  I had a strong sense of where I came from.  I was fortunate enough to know all four of my grandparents.  I also grew up around many aunts, uncles and cousins.  It was in my childhood that I developed my love for dogs, history, the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, hoodsies and fried clams.  I also developed a Boston accent that still manages to slip out when I am emotional or have been drinking.

You could say that my story really began early morning on July 3, 1993 when my family drove away from my grandmother’s house in Massachusetts. We were setting off for our new life in Maine.  This was the summer before my freshman year in high school and I was excited to be starting high school in a new place. My high school memories were filled with cross country and track practices, cashiering at the local Shop ‘n Save, social studies and French class, walks by the ocean and driving my hand-me-down ‘87 Ford Escort around town because there was nothing else to do.   During my high school years, I found small town life to be suffocating and I longed to see the world.  I would later become a “boomerang kid” and return in my twenties where I learned that it’s actually not so bad to be from a small town.

You could say that my story really began on August 30, 1997 which was my nineteenth birthday.  My father and I left our home in Surry, Maine and I was about to embark on my four year journey at the University of Southern Maine.  I was tired that morning because I had spent the night before with my high school best friend Darcy at the Blue Hill Fair.  I was excited to be leaving home for the first time.  I also was embarrassed because my father told everyone, from the waitress at the Augusta Friendly’s to the USM volunteers directing traffic that they were making me start college on my birthday.  My college years were filled with history classes, cross country and track practices, midnight trips to L.L.Bean (when we were under 21) and trips to the bars in the Old Port in Portland (once we were legal).  It was also during my college years that I did a semester in Winchester, U.K.

You could say my story began on July 5, 2005 at around 5:00 am when I was boarding a plane from Bangor International Airport to Las Vegas for the 2005 Young Republican National Convention.  This organization would play a big role in my life for the next 5 years and I would even hold an officer title.  I got to see many places in the U.S. that I had never been such as Nashville, Denver, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Little Rock and Miami.  I got to meet many important political figures.  Politics helped me grow as a person because had been a relatively quiet and shy person and politics helped me develop my social skills.  My years in this organization gave me one of the biggest gifts of all- friendships and love.

You could say that my story began during the late afternoon of August 1, 2008 at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. That is when the greatest love story of my life began. I knew I really liked this guy and he seemed to really like me.   It was our first date only we didn’t really know it when it started.  What started as an outing between friends evolved into a date as the night went on.  It was on this day that we held hands for the first time and that we had our first kiss.  I was doubtful that it would ever work out but I decided to do something that I never do, which was to let my guard down.  Despite living seven hours apart and an age difference I don’t care to mention, our love only seemed to blossom.  There were lots of weekend trips and lots of tanks of gas charged to my VISA card.   I drank a lot of  5 hour energy shots and I could recognize all the people who worked at the rest stops on Mass Pike.  364 days later I moved to Albany.  

You could say that our story began on September 29, 2012 at 1:30pm at Blessed Sacrament Church in Albany, NY.  Our fairytale was going to officially begin.  I was so excited that I had to tell myself to breathe and my knees were shaking.  I was in my princess dress and he wore a kilt.  Of course, we learned that marriage wasn’t always easy but we were best friends and soul mates.  We weathered the low of a miscarriage and the high of the birth of our daughter.  We bought a house and a family car.  We went on five cruises and explored many Caribbean islands. We both had some success in our careers (he more than me.)  We had many friends and an active social life.  We had so many plans.  Our life was good.

But this story doesn’t begin on any of those days.  This story begins on a Sunday morning, August 21, 2016 in the Medical ICU at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center at 8:35 am.  I was exhausted.  I hadn’t slept in 30 hours and I hadn’t showered for 3 or 4 days because I was too afraid to leave the unit.  One of our best friends had stayed up with me all night. After a 5 month battle with surgical complications from a surgery performed at another hospital the doctors had just declared my husband clinically dead.

I was heartbroken and numb.  Our fairy tale was over.  I had tried to do everything I could to save him.  He fought until the bitter end.  My only relief was that he wasn’t in pain anymore.  It just wasn’t meant to be.  Our fairy tale ended too soon.  I didn’t know how I was going to do this without him.  How was I supposed to carry on and live my life without my best friend? A part of me died with him that morning.  This is the story of the part of me that is still living.