I listened to my brother blame himself and felt my heart crumble.
He should’ve been by her side. Why that day? That time of the afternoon?
I was scrambling to give him answers, some shred of comfort to cushion his shock.
“She was fine when you left,” I tried to say. “There was no way you could’ve known. No [expletive] way.”
He’d driven just ten minutes to their other home, to get a few things and water the plants in the yard. The weather had gotten warmer and the garden needed attention or the plants would suffer. My brother, now age sixty-five, and Carol Ann, seventy-one, had just begun their retirement together. They no longer needed the larger two-bedroom house they’d shared for over twenty years, though it still needed looking after from time to time. So, when Governor Newsom declared the stay-at-home order on March 19 in California, they decided it would be better to stay at their beach property near Santa Cruz, a place surrounded by the ocean and drenched in peacefulness. What better place to ride out a life-threatening pandemic, they thought. Although it was a small condominium, after almost thirty-six years of marriage, they could afford it and moved in last year. It was a dream home, right on the beach, overlooking the sky-blue water.
While my brother took care of practical things at the other house, so Carol Ann didn’t have to worry about them, she played on-line bridge to keep her mind occupied. Like everyone right now, she thought about Covid-19 constantly and tried to busy herself doing something she’d typically enjoyed at home, away from the fear of the pandemic for a few hours.
They were both doing exactly the things we are all doing. We’re focused on distracting ourselves with games, cooking, gardening, cleaning, organizing the garage, the closets, paperwork. We may feel emotionally weary and more physically tired than usual, like my sister-in-law felt last week, but we’re trying to keep to our normal routines in this new reality, potentially dismissing or downplaying feelings that could also be warning signs. We don’t want to overreact, give in to our fears; we’re fine. It’s just mild malaise, Spring allergies. The muscle soreness is probably from yard work, sitting too long. The headache is because we’ve been staring at the computer for hours. We don’t need to call a doctor, overburden them with minor aches and pains, or God-forbid, go to the hospital. The emergency room and the hospital should be for patients who really need it, right? But, this time, it was my sister-in-law, Carol Ann, who really needed it. And Carol Ann would be the one to make her own 911 call, telling the dispatcher her name and the unit number of the beach condo, because her legs weren’t working.
She thought she was experiencing some kind of stroke, but without any advanced warning. As paramedics and doctors assessed her condition and next steps, she slipped into unconsciousness and had to be intubated. Her lungs showed signs of pneumonia, perhaps due to the stroke, but it wasn’t definitive. Covid-19 protocols went into effect, and she was tested for the virus in the ICU. Hazmat and PPE gear, a necessity now.
Doctors made the decision not to put Carol Ann at further risk with a surgical procedure to her brain if she was also fighting the coronavirus infection; they would further assess her condition after receiving the test results. A CT scan in the emergency room, however, showed that oxygen to Carol Ann's brain was severely impacted at the brainstem and her chance of survival was now slim. There was nothing more that could be done medically except to keep her mechanically breathing through the ventilator.
Time and space were spinning out of control as I heard these details, and I couldn’t comprehend how my brother was even standing upright and functioning at all. He and Carol Ann had been together almost thirty-six years, but now he couldn’t even touch her without personal protection. I wasn’t even sure my brother was allowed in the ICU.
“Yesterday, at 5 minutes to 3:00, I thought we were happy,” he said, nervously awaiting Carol Ann's test results.
I thought back to their sunny wedding day at the rose garden in San Jose. I was nineteen. Carol Ann wore a simple, cream-colored dress that made her intense blue eyes look like they were glowing. She was so happy. They were happy, carefree and in love.
They’d both left unfulfilling relationships and married in the summer of 1984. My brother was just twenty-nine; Carol Ann was thirty-five and a single mother. They made the decision not to have more children, and instead, dedicated themselves to each other and Carol Ann's children who needed a loving father figure in their lives. My brother, in many ways, had been that father figure for me as a girl. We are ten years apart, and because of the time he spent with me growing up, and his musical influence, I pursued music and became a singer. When I was little, he’d let me sit in the room where he practiced his guitar. I would turn the pages of the sheet music while he played. He didn’t mind if I sang along with him, and I learned about the Beatles, James Taylor, Carol King, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, singing their songs at age six and seven. We bonded in ways that my father and I never did. I thought Carol Ann and her children were lucky to have my brother in their lives, and I respected their bond, often envying it as a young woman before I became a wife and parent.
After 24 hours of waiting, her Covid-19 test result was negative, and my brother could finally comfort his wife without a mask and gloves.
“I’m rubbing her feet,” he told me on the phone. “I sang the wedding song I wrote for her and a few others. Did you see the photo I emailed you?”
I didn’t want to look. It was too painful.
“I haven’t,” I said.
“Please check,” he answered. “She looks angelic to me. She was lately bothered by her wrinkles, but they’re mysteriously gone.”
Later, I went to the mirror and studied my own wrinkles and the bright silver hair that’s overtaking my head. I was grateful for all of it, and above all else, my husband and teenage children in the next room, but my heart was flooding with pain for my brother and Carol Ann. Within minutes, everything had changed.
Since the Covid-19 test was negative, Kris, their daughter, boarded a plane with her son, Carol Ann's adult grandson, and flew across the country. They wanted to be there in person, taking extra precautions given the travel risks. David, their son who lives near San Jose with his family, could finally enter the hospital to be with his mother. Late that night, alongside my brother, they held and surrounded Carol Ann with their love and physical support in the ICU and made the decision to remove the ventilator. They thought it might be a matter of minutes, a few hours at the most, and she was transferred to a private room.
When one of Carol Ann's closest friends, a Harvard medical school grad and general medicine doctor, learned the details of the massive stroke, she sensed that Carol Ann would not want to leave her body in a dark hospital room. The two friends had bonded over a shared loved for music and dancing and had become close over the last few years.
“She was relatively healthy, vibrant, and had the energy of a 40-year-old. Our loving music and dance community is hurting right now. We’re all still in shock,” Karin wrote to me.
A physician with rare and extensive knowledge of Eastern mind-body integrity, Karin had promised Carol Ann last year that she'd perform something called an “energy balancing” after the sudden loss of a dynamic mutual friend. Because of their schedules, travel commitments, and then the pandemic sheltering order, Karin hadn’t been able to perform the restorative technique for Carol Ann.
“She told me that she really wanted me to be there for her if anything ever went wrong,” Karin shared. “And she would've done anything to be there for me in my time of need. It was a unique and wonderful connection.”
My brother shared with Karin the following morning that the ventilator was removed in the wee hours, and Carol Ann had been breathing on her own for more than eight hours. Knowing Carol Ann's inner strength and determination, Karin felt that her friend was continuing to breathe to give my brother and her children more time to accept letting her go. Perhaps, Carol Ann's spirited soul also needed that time to let go.
“She was deeply spiritual and loving,” Karin told me, “very intelligent, fun, and intuitive.”
It was soon clear to all who loved Carol Ann that she should return home to her Window On The Ocean, a view she'd wanted for so long, now memorialized in a song written by Santa Cruz musician, Alex Lucero, to honor her life. It was a place of great comfort, where she would be surrounded by the light and warmth of the sun and her caring family, her favorite music playing, the painting she cherished over the fireplace: a gypsy girl, a free-spirit, her face in shadow and reflection, with radiant pink and yellow flowers in her arms and hair, a luxurious shawl warming her shoulders, and my brother by her side -- the man who’d given her and her children his dedication and love for almost four decades.
She departed this world on her terms, breathing without the ventilator for over 57 hours -- a testament to Carol Ann's strength and passion for life.
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