Imagining My Partner’s Death Gave Me Peace of Mind
I want to be blindsided by tragedy, not living with every muscle tensed
The first time I borrowed someone else’s grief was six years ago in the emergency room at Mass General Hospital in Boston. My husband was sitting on a gurney in blood-spattered clothes with a silver bowl of ice on his lap. In the bowl was his left index finger, which he had accidentally amputated while working with tools in our basement.
A young, handsome doctor came in and explained that depending on our insurance, he could just stitch up the nub and send us home, or he could do a complicated 10-hour microsurgery in an attempt to reattach the finger.
We explained that my husband’s job as a full-time firefighter had excellent health benefits, so moments later they were stripping him down and prepping for surgery.
While we waited, one of the nurses mentioned two names and asked us if we had known them. They were the names of two Boston firefighters who had been killed while fighting a fire only days before.
We didn’t know them, but their smiling faces had been scrolling across the news channels of every TV in the hospital. With close-cropped hair and the big goofy smiles of strong, confident, men, they looked like they were cast from the…
