C.O.D.

Well Babe, I guess when the coroner says the autopsy results will be available in 4-6 weeks, what they really meant to say was, “maybe it will be ready in 4-6 weeks but really we have 90 days from the date of the autopsy, so you can call in once a week to find out the status” if you want but really we have another 6 weeks so don’t hold our breath.

I’ve come to learn that a death certificate lists the cause of death so without a C.O.D., there’s no death certificate--okay, there’s a preliminary death certificate that says “pending--under investigation” in the cause of death box and a bunch of blank and empty boxes afterwards that still needs to be filled out.  So, I have these death certificates with a bunch of missing information that I can use to take care of your estate but still have no clue as to how my husband died.  Great--at least I can withdraw funds from your checking account, let the social security administration, your credit cards, and the credit bureaus know you died, and go to probate--I mean, what else can a widow ask for in life?!  

Everytime I think about your autopsy, I envision you laying on the medical examiner’s table with your chest cut open as Ducky (Dr. Mallard from NCIS) is talking to you as he examines you.  I can hear him saying, “Mr. C, what secrets does your body hold?  What will I find when I’m done examining you” in his scottish accent.  Then Gibbs and DiNozzo (I know he left the show, but just wait for it) walks in and Gibbs asks “What do you have for me?”  And Duckie would say, “I’m not quite sure yet.  His heart and lungs appear to be healthy and normal.  No sign of trauma or sickness except for the road rash on one of his knee from a motorcycle accident that happened two weeks ago.  The content of his stomach shows that his last meal was a super steak / carnitas burrito with no beans or lettuce but a lot of sour cream.  Everything looks normal, and he appears to be perfectly healthy, so it’s hard to say what his cause of death is.  I need more time to investigate further--he’s quite an anomaly.  It would appear he dropped dead for no reason!”  Then DiNozzo would say, “Boss, I think it’s the wife.  It’s always the wife!”  (See, only DiNozzo would say that.  That was his line.)

When the doctors walked into the ‘family room’ to tell me you died.  First, I screamed, “Nooo!! ” at the tops of my lungs and I said, “you must have the wrong person.”  Then I turned to KT and asked, “Is this joke?”  I just kept thinking you guys were playing the biggest joke on me.  I was expecting cameras to race in and say, “Surprise, you’re on candid camera.  We just wanted to see how you would react if your husband die.”  I kept looking at the door expecting cameras to race in any minute but there were no cameras and it wasn’t a joke.  Then the doctors asked, “Do you know if there’s anything wrong with your husband?”  I’m sure I gave them the death stare (like I did with the ambulance technician--but now that I think about it, this was probably my first death stare of the day) since aren't they supposed to tell me what was wrong with my husband and not the other way around?  I eventually said, "He got into a motorcycle accident two weeks ago but the ER doctor said that he was fine--no broken bones or internal injuries.  He saw his primary care physician a week ago and he said he had bruise bones from the accident but other than that, he was fine.  He did complain that he had a hard time breathing last Wednesday."  Then they asked if I wanted an autopsy and I nodded yes.  Why wouldn’t I want to know why my perfectly health husband dropped dead.  

After this, I went into a complete mental breakdown.  I probably fell to the floor a ton of time because laying on the floor was a lot easier than standing on my own two feet.  I started my crazy lady antics for hours--probably days if you count screaming and throwing tantrums at home and laying in bed, crying endlessly, unable to speak or utter anything coherent for days on end.  I kept playing the sequence of events in my head over and over again, and asking myself, what did I miss and what could I have done differently.  I was driving myself mad and all I kept hearing was you saying, “SY, sometime things happen for no apparent reason.  There’s no explanation for it--no logic or reasoning behind it, you just have to accept it.”  This was something you were trying to impart on me for along time (I’m not even sure if you believe this yourself, but you always said this to me since I always had a hard time of letting things go that don’t make sense or if there was no rational or logic explanation for it.  It would just eat me up and probably drove you crazy since I couldn’t ‘leave it’ as you would like to say).  Eventually, I was able to leave it (I know that’s what you would want me to do).  At the end of the day, knowing won’t change anything.  It doesn’t bring you back--it only changes the box that says “pending--under investigation” and fills up the blank and empty boxes on the bottom half of your death certificate.  

If anything, I think knowing would scare me more.  Maybe there were signs that I missed.  Maybe there was something I could have done differently that might have changed your fate.  What if I had the ability to save you but I didn't because I missed the signs.  It’s like DiNozzo says, “It’s always the wife.”  How could I ever live with that knowledge?

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