I recently came across this beautiful Indigo Girls song, "ANDY"
It's one of the greatest songs I've ever heard.
Our family is processing this devastation as best we can. It is without a doubt the hardest time of all our lives.
I am wrestling with writing about witnessing Andy's death. I use this blog as a way of processing my own thoughts and emotions, as a way of preserving this arc of our lives (without knowing where it was going) and often the act of writing itself helps me to remember.
One of the things Andy would tell me was "You can't remember anything right now because you're panicking. Once that passes you'll remember everything."
I don't know if I want to remember that day, Saturday, September 5th, 2026.
The day my husband died. The day the boys lost their dad. The day Billee lost her first son.
The hospital called me at about 5:45am to say I should come because his cardiac function was decreasing. Despite being on the medication for his pneumonia and viremia, the cancer cells were too aggressive, and his kidneys and heart were simply too overworked.
I screamed full-blast the entire drive from our house to the hospital. I punched the steering wheel. I ran through wet, freshly cut grass from the parking lot (valet closed, it was too early) and got a cramp hurrying to the entrance.
I notified the kids and they followed quickly after. I spent some time alone with Andy, watching him breathing, telling him I loved him. I spoke some private words, and placed my face in his palm, his arms and wrists wrapped in tape, IVs, lines and wires, his finger tips purple from glucose monitoring.
His mother and sister joined us and the doctors came in to explain the situation. He is being kept alive by life support but his body is not responding to the medications; the ALCL has progressed too far throughout his system. A nurse placed the "Privacy Please: a family is saying goodbye to a loved one" over his door. I called his brother.
We thought at any moment he'd open his eyes, wake up and say he was fine.
Gradually with our permission (which made us all sick to have to do) they began shutting down the life support machines and extubated him.
We held him, kissed his forehead and hands and told him how much we love him.
He breathed slowly and then one more time and stopped.
All of us broke down, begging him not to go, please come back, darling.
We each took private time to talk to him. Andy was adamant that we stay with him for at least 20 minutes after because "the soul is still in there, and I don't want to be alone".
So we stayed for an hour and a half.
We met with beautiful Dr. Bindal, who I adore, and she gave me a genuine, heartfelt, strong hug.
"Thank you doctor, I know you tried, thank you for trying so hard for him..." which she did. She exhausted every avenue and therapy for us. She worked hard for Andy from the second she took over his case.
At the end, when I thought I was ready to accept this, started walking to the elevators, then suddenly was overcome with anguish, ran back to the ICU and flew into his room;
"Andy, my darling, I miss you, I love you sweetheart..." and kissed him.
But he had changed by that point, he wasn't the same, and the experience shocked me.
Looking back on it, it's okay, because it revealed that it's not about the body now.
It's about his soul - his soul goes on to the next place.
His soul gets to be a part of something bigger, more majestic, more wonderful in every way.
He can see everything now, the whole universe. He can be outside of time itself. He can exist forever in perfect love, which is where he deserves to be, if we can't have him here.
Our beloved Andy
12/27/1965 - 9/5/2026
Taken the day before our wedding, 10.9.2010
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