His heart just stopped beating.

Photo: April 2013, Southwest road trip. Heart ashes.

A few days after George’s death the Medical Examiner’s Office called to tell us that no cause of death could be determined from the autopsy.  They had opened up his entire body, examined it piece by piece, and found everything in perfect order.  There were no occluded blood vessels, so heart attack was ruled out.  There was no internal bleeding, so stroke and aneurysm were ruled out.  There were no signs of trauma, so he didn’t die from hitting the parked car.  His heart.  Just.  Stopped.  Beating.  Just stopped.  They couldn’t tell me why.  How does a healthy man’s 38-year old heart just decide to stop beating one day?  And not just any healthy man, but George.  That was my heart, that was Nova’s heart.  How could there be no explanation?

The thought of George on an examining table, a scalpel slicing neatly through his scalp and frontal midline, his brain and heart and vital organs being removed and held and examined, is horrifying.  It is the most horrifying horror story I can think of.  I have to keep reminding myself that he was dead.  He felt nothing.  But what if he did?  And they didn’t even find anything.  All those horrifying images I now have to live with, and we are no closer to understanding why he dropped dead one day.  It was a Tuesday when he died.  That’s all we know.  

They sent blood and tissue samples to the lab for further testing.  Nothing could be concluded by the naked eye, but perhaps the lab results would provide some answers.  They wrote “Pending” on his death certificate, and told us it could be awhile before the final report was complete.  It took nine months for them to finish that report.  And the labs were inconclusive.  In the end, they assigned “Lethal Cardiac Arrhythmia” as the cause of death, based on no other probable conclusion.  I suppose it was accurate, his heart did stop, he did have an arrhythmia.  But why?

My mind was consumed by all the existential questions.  What is the purpose of George’s death?  What does this mean for him, for me, for Nova?  Why us?  Why was I chosen to go through this?  Why was he chosen to die?  The answer that came to me was both comforting and infuriating:  

George is needed somewhere else.  He has been chosen to do higher work on a higher plane, work that he could not have accomplished in this life, in his body.  You have been chosen because there are things you need to do in this life that will be informed by this experience, and you are strong enough to handle it.  And in the end, it is all about Nova.  She is at the center of it all, for reasons that will not be revealed to you for some time.

Even in my darkest hour, I am being told to believe that everything has a reason that is purposeful and good?  That is so fucking infuriating.  

At the same time, it was comforting to know that something greater than me was at work.  That I couldn’t have done anything to save George from dying.  That everything had happened exactly as it needed to happen, and that no amount of wondering “what if” would change anything.

I was somewhat surprised by my spiritual conviction around something so personally tragic, this inner voice that was spewing intangible esoteric stories about why my life was ruined.  Because no matter what beliefs I’d had about life, death, soul, and non-physical realities, this was now happening to me, and my belief system should have been shattered.  I tried to argue the voice of “this is not fair and there is no good reason for this and I am a victim and I will never be happy again,” but it did not stick.  Nothing made sense to my human mind, but something within me understood that what was happening to us was sacred.  That although this was not at all what I wanted nor expected from my life, it was part of a larger plan, and I needed to trust the Universe.  

But knowing this did not lessen the pain.  The pain was excruciating, and I couldn’t fathom a life without George.  I did not want this reality, no matter what that voice said.  I resisted it with every bone in my body.