Words to Leave By: Bridges Out of the Quiet Place

“I remember many things from my husband’s sudden cardiac arrest at 34 years old – the guttural, panicked sounds of his agonal breathing in our darkened bedroom; the timbre of his voice as a pocket of air passed through his vocal cords in response to my chest compressions; the sight of his body turning gray and the sound of it slamming against the floor with the first shock from the defibrillator.

I remember the relief when he woke up the next day neurologically and physically intact; bringing him home two days later; answering his questions, repeated on a loop, about how he temporarily died.”