Devastate, In All Its Forms

devastate
overpower
The fever escalates to 106 degrees and his body is packed in ice. The lungs labor, no longer able to pull breath in of their own accord. I begin to sense that we could lose this battle.

to lay waste; to render desolate
It is unstoppable coursing through the body, cutting a path through blood and tissue, corrupting organs. In order to focus the body's energy on repairing the rampant destruction, the doctors render him unconscious. The machines wheeze and click, the tubes snaking from both legs, both arms, the ventilator clamped loosely between idle teeth. By the time I see him, he is hovering on the line, fighting in still sterile silence.

destroy, sack, despoil, ravage
Most people look smaller in the hospital bed, shrunken and wasting, but somehow he looks larger and stronger, a mighty Goliath felled. Yet there are signs of the illness everywhere. The tape across his face holding the ventilator in place. The blood stains on his cheeks, pillow and sheets leaked out from his serrated lungs. The distended look of his body from the amount of fluid being administered. The tense, fearful pitch of the voices surrounding the bed.

I take his hand, and it is heavy and limp; the skin is dry and rough. I squeeze and nothing happens, but I believe he can hear me. I say, "Ronnie, I'm here. It's Ashley." I tell him to fight, to be strong, that we know he can make it. I tell him I love him. And all the while my sister is wringing his forearm and repeating, "Please don't leave me."

And the machine marking the line pitches, wails and I am pulled by the shoulders out of the room and into the hallway and they descend in the gauzy sterile covers and rubber gloves and the voices are urgent and I can't stop picturing the way he doesn't look like himself and the way my sister was pleading with him.

to confound or stun
They gather us in a small room on the other side of the ICU. Anna sits in a chair and I perch on the arm and methodically run my hand over her back and murmur nonsense in an effort to be soothing. Dad and Justin jangle restlessly by the door. Mom sits almost perfectly still - as though she knows what she must steel herself against. Ronnie's sister is there along with a former baseball player of Ronnie's that turned surrogate son.

The nurse comes in, addresses my sister and draws a breath. I want to yell, "Please don't say it." I know it. I know what's coming. And yet, when the words fall forward into the white space, "He didn't make it" my heart stops beating for a moment. There is a head rush, I lean forward and put my face in my hands. I think I cry. But in my head, all I can think is, "No no no no no no."

to overwhelm, as with grief
Anna says nothing. She leans back in the chair and blinks. I worry that she's going to pass out, and we ask for a cold cloth. Mom presses it to her forehead, the back of her neck, but she remains silent and immobile. Everyone cries and says it isn't so and that it can't be true. And she sits there, waiting. After a few moments, the room grows quiet, an eerie chord among the sounds of grief. Anna begins to cry, her face resting on her arms, resting on her knees, and her shoulders shake with the pain and the terror and the unfathomable sadness.

ruin utterly
As we leave the hospital, I turn to look at Anna. Her face is swollen, her eyes mottled. And across her cheeks are blue-tinged red patches where the capillaries have burst. She is only a ghost of herself. I feel hollow and shaky, so empty and terrified that I feel for a moment that I could die, too.

devastating
tending or threatening to devastate
The next morning, I wake and the world is still turning. Justin, Eva and I pile into the car and drive to Anna and Ronnie's house. In the car, I say to them that I'm going to be strong. I'm going to hold back the tears and support her. But when we get there, I walk through the garage pass the Tacoma and there are a pair of his shoes by the door in this way that I know he loosened the laces and stepped out of them. Just stepped out of them like he would be back.

I open the door and there is the smell of their house. The house they picked out together, whose back porch offered a view of the foothills in the distance. And through the kitchen, I can see Anna, looking thin and tired, and I lose my barely-there composure. I sob. She opens her arms and I go to her, and I weep and tremble. Because this is not the way it's supposed to be.

satirical, ironic or caustic in an effective way
He fought cancer, beginning just a year after they married. He took the chemo in stride, never missing a day of school. And in December, he underwent the semi-annual scan that revealed a clean bill of health and extended his green-light status to four and a half years.

We always worried about the cancer, that it would take him before old age. That he and Anna wouldn't get to grow old together. But after this much time, I grew complacent about it, felt like it was a hardship that had been overcome, dismissed it as a dark cloud that passed and gave way to brighter days.

wreaking complete destruction
He walked into the hospital Monday morning and in less than twelve hours, he was dead. It was surreal, unbelievable. Just the death, just the passing, the sudden and unexpected loss were enough to bring me to my knees.

In the aftermath, however, the extent of the damage only grew and became more pronounced. Anna, thirty-four and a widow. Anna with two houses - the one they left behind when they moved still on the market and this new house just six months into a mortgage. Anna rambling around the house they dreamed of, saved for, planned to fill with kids. Anna with the dog he had when they married, and the two he bought her when Ben passed. Anna with everything she built her life around swept out from under her with no warning and no mercy.

physically or spiritually defeating, as in a crushing blow
More than a thousand people come to the visitation, and somewhere between seven and eight hundred come to the memorial service. There are so many touching moments - wonderful stories shared, the comfort of strangers, the celebration of a life well-lived. There are the people who come for me, to give me a hug and a shoulder to cry on and the comfort of their presence.

And then on Friday afternoon, I sit in the living room with Ronnie's two best friends and we talk about Ronnie. And we laugh over things he'd done and said. And in an instant, I look up, look around, and I realize with piercing finality that he will not come back.

devastation
the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists
The world as we know it is gone. Anna is alone. Our family is no longer whole. And everything that happened just a day before is a lifetime away. I cannot think of what life was like before Monday. I cannot fathom what life will be like tomorrow.

Anna is...devastated. And yet so strong and so graceful that I can only be ashamed of my own weakness and frailty. My heart aches for her, and though I can't, I wish that I could ease her burden and take some of her pain on myself.

And I'm faltering. I stumble between grief and denial, anger and numbness. I try to think about life beyond this moment, and I find that I can't imagine the time when this tragedy doesn't color everything. All of our lives were touched by Ronnie. And all of us feel his absence profoundly, something held dear ripped so viciously from our hands.

Right now, the world exists in shades of gray. Right now, my life is a strung-together series of moments that are categorized into thinking about "it" or not thinking about "it." Right now, my heart is broken. Right now, I know that we will get through - but I am weary. Right now, I know that we will carry on - but it will be heavy. Right now, I'm dealing with wounds that will leave scars. Right now, the devastation is so raw, so palpable, so complete, that it's hard to stand amongst the ruins and contemplate taking the first step toward rebuilding.