Unconscious on pain medication, her kidneys failing, fluid building up in her lungs. She struggled for breath for most of her last day.<\/p>\n
I sat by her side, held her hand, told her that she didn't have to fight anymore. That it was OK to let go. She wouldn't. <\/p>\n
Late that night, I was sitting in the hospital room's recliner, exhausted and naively thinking I might be able to get some sleep, that she would probably wake up again once some of the medication wore off, that this was a temporary situation. The doctor had <\/em>said, around noon, that she likely had \"days\" left, not \"hours\".<\/p>\n Then, I heard little whimpers escaping in her breath.<\/p>\n I went back to her side, held her hand. I told her, three times:<\/p>\n \" You have been the best wife.<\/p>\n You've done a great job.<\/p>\n But you can go now.<\/p>\n You are free. And then she stopped breathing.<\/p>\n I choose to believe she heard me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unconscious on pain medication, her kidneys failing, fluid building up in her lungs. She struggled for breath for most of her last day. I sat by her side, held her hand, told her that she didn't have to fight anymore. That it was OK to let go. She wouldn't. Late that night, I was sitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goodbye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33810"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33819,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33810\/revisions\/33819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWe all love you.<\/p>\n
\n\"<\/p>\n