10/10/26
Dear Rob,
I shared something with someone recently that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I was never prepared for your death or for everything that came afterward. How could I have been? No one teaches us how to speak to a medical examiner when the person you love most in this world has died unexpectedly. No one prepares you to find a funeral home, decide whether your husband should be buried or cremated, or navigate the financial responsibilities that come with planning the funeral of your loved one. We don’t learn these things in high school or college. There is no handbook for becoming a widow overnight, no class that teaches you how to make impossible decisions while your heart is breaking.
When people hear everything I carried from the moment I found you dead to the day of your funeral, they are shocked. They cannot believe I did so much on my own. Sometimes, neither can I. The night you died, I called your sister, but she didn’t answer. I called your brother, and he didn’t answer. I called your sister’s fiancé, but he didn’t answer either. I couldn’t bring myself to call my parents because I knew what hearing that news would do to them, both mentally and physically. I called Jen, but she didn’t answer at first. Out of everyone, she was the one who eventually returned my call.
No one prepares you for the phone calls you have to make after finding your husband dead. There is no way to rehearse those words or soften the reality of what you’re telling someone. I was living through the worst moment of my life, yet I had to be the person to tell others that you were gone. In that moment, I told myself to keep moving. Make the calls. Complete the checklist. Figure out the next step. I went into survival mode because I had no other choice. Our children needed me, decisions needed to be made, and the world kept demanding things from me when all I wanted was for someone to take care of me.
Now, more than a year later, I can look back and recognize just how cruel and lonely those moments were. I had to navigate the unimaginable without the one person who would have helped me in a heartbeat. You knew me, Rob. You knew my stress level, what I could handle, and what pushed me past my limits. You knew when I needed reassurance and when I needed you to step in and take something off my plate. You were the person I would have called when I didn’t know what to do. But you were the very person I had lost.
Today, I shared some of those memories with my hairstylist. I talked about the agony, the shock, and the deep loneliness that followed your death. I remembered all those times I stood in the shower and cried because I didn’t want anyone to hear me. The shower became a place where I could finally let go, where I could sob without worrying about frightening the kids or having to explain why I was falling apart. I could turn on the water and cry, even if only for a few minutes, before I had to walk back out and keep going.
I think people sometimes imagine grief as the moment you receive the news, the funeral, or the anniversaries that follow. But some of the most painful moments happen when no one is watching. They happen when you’re alone, trying to make one more phone call, or when you’re expected to make practical decisions while your heart is still screaming that this cannot possibly be real.
One of the hardest parts of your death was that it happened close to a holiday. Because of the holiday, there were staffing shortages, and I struggled to reach people who could answer my questions. Everything was already overwhelming, and not knowing what was happening made it even harder. If you were here, you would probably ask why I kept calling, why I needed to know where you were, and why I kept asking if you were okay.
I know how it sounds, honey. You had died. But my heart hadn’t caught up with that reality. We had spent 26 years loving each other and had been friends for 27 years. We were high-school sweethearts who never broke up, who built a life together, raised three children, and shared the ordinary routines that became the foundation of our world. I had never known a life in which you weren’t part of mine.
We promised each other, “Till death do us part.” I understood those words as a promise about the future, never imagining how devastating it would be to live them. I knew death was part of life, but I never understood how it could take your person and leave you here, still loving them, still reaching for them, and still instinctively wanting to take care of them.
I didn’t watch your body being taken out of our home because I couldn’t bear to see it. Instead, I saw the footage from our front-door camera. Rob, I was appalled by what I saw. I expected a gurney and for you to be handled with care and dignity. Instead, I watched two men drag your body out of our home. That image has stayed with me. You were leaving our home for the last time, and I wasn’t there to say goodbye. I couldn’t protect you or make sure you were being treated with the care I believed you deserved.
After you left our home, I started calling the funeral home. I asked whether you were okay, whether someone was with you, and whether your body had been refrigerated. I needed to know that you were somewhere safe, that someone was looking after you, and that you weren’t simply lying there alone. I could sense that the person on the other end of the phone was uncomfortable with my questions. Perhaps she didn’t know what to say to a wife who was asking whether her deceased husband was okay.
When she told me she could see the video of you lying on the table, something inside me broke all over again. I wanted to scream, but all I could do was cry. I told her it wasn’t fair that no one was there with you. You deserved to have someone beside you. You deserved tenderness and dignity. You had spent so many years taking care of our family, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you being alone.
In my desperation, I asked if I could stay beside you until the medical examiner picked you up. I wanted to sit with you, even if you couldn’t see or hear me. I wanted to do something that would allow me to feel like I was still your wife in a moment when everything familiar had been taken away.
All I heard was, “I’m so sorry, but you can’t do that.”
I didn’t sleep well that night. The next day, I called again and learned that your body had been transferred to the medical examiner’s office. So I called them, too. Once again, I asked whether you were okay and whether your body had been refrigerated. Questions I had never imagined asking anyone, let alone about my own husband.
I was told your examination had been delayed. Then someone told me you were number 26. You were number 26, Rob. The twenty-sixth person who had died on June 25, 2025.
I interrupted and said, “Please don’t refer to my husband as a number. Please call him by his name.”
And then I cried.
Because you weren’t a number. You were Robert Anders Sorensen. You were my husband, the father of our three children, the boy I fell in love with in high school, and the man I thought I would grow old with. You had a name, a family, and a life that mattered. You were loved. You were still loved. I needed them to understand that.
Every day you were at the medical examiner’s office, I called to make sure you were okay. The thought of someone examining your body and making incisions was deeply unsettling to me. If you were here, I can imagine you responding in your matter-of-fact way, “Honey, I’m dead.” You would probably tell me that the examination was necessary and that I needed to stop worrying.
But I was the person who knew every part of you. I knew your moles, your scars, and the familiar details that come from years of loving someone. I knew you as a living, breathing person, not as a body on a table. Understanding that the examination was necessary didn’t make it any easier to accept that strangers were responsible for your physical care and I couldn’t be there.
I was your wife. I had promised to stand beside you through life, and now, when I wanted nothing more than to be beside you, I couldn’t.
There was another moment that has stayed with me. When Pastor Ralph wasn’t available to visit, he sent another pastor to my parents’ house. I remember telling him that I wished I knew you had made it to heaven. I wished there were some way for us, here on earth, to know that our loved ones had arrived safely.
Doesn’t that sound strange, Rob? I knew you believed in God, and I knew your faith mattered to you. But I was desperate for reassurance that you were okay. I wanted someone to tell me that you weren’t lost, that you were somewhere safe and at peace. I sobbed as I told the pastor that I just wanted to know you were okay. He looked at me and reassured me that you believed in God and were with Him.
I wanted to hold on to those words. I wanted to believe them with every part of me. But I was still standing in the wreckage of our life, trying to understand how you could be in heaven while I was here on earth, trying to figure out what to do next. I wanted to know you were safe, but more than anything, I wanted you here.
For a long time, I didn’t fully understand why I made all those calls or why I kept asking the same questions. Through therapy, reflection, and conversations with friends, I’m beginning to understand something about myself.
I wasn’t just trying to understand your death. I was still trying to take care of you.
You were such a big part of my life that I didn’t know how to stop being your wife just because you had died. For 26 years, loving you meant checking on you, worrying about you, and making sure you were okay. It was part of our marriage, woven into the ordinary ways we cared for each other. I couldn’t simply switch that off when you took your last breath.
My mind knew you were gone, but my heart was still reaching for you. The instinct to protect you and make sure you were safe hadn’t disappeared. I couldn’t call you or ask how you were doing, so I called the people responsible for your body. I asked whether you were okay because I was trying to do the only thing I could think of to keep loving you in a situation I couldn’t change or understand.
I think that’s what makes these memories so painful. I had all this love and nowhere to put it. I had all this concern and no way to check on you. I had promised to stand beside you, but death had taken away my ability to do that in the way I understood. I couldn’t protect you from what was happening, and I couldn’t even sit beside you to say goodbye.
I had spent so much of my life believing that if something happened to you, I would be there. I would show up and do whatever needed to be done. I would be the person who stayed. And then the one thing I could never have imagined happened, and I found myself in a world where love wasn’t enough to let me reach you.
I wonder if people realize that love doesn’t simply stop when someone’s heart stops beating. Our marriage didn’t disappear the moment you died. Twenty-six years of loving you didn’t vanish because your body was no longer alive. The promises we made, the routines we shared, and the instinct to look after each other were part of who I was. I couldn’t wake up the next morning and suddenly become someone who no longer worried about you.
I was still your wife. I just had no idea how to be your wife in a world where you were no longer physically here.
And perhaps that’s why those calls mattered so much. I was trying to fulfill a responsibility that had always belonged to love, but death had taken away my ability to do it in the ways I understood. I couldn’t make sure you were safe with my own eyes, so I asked questions. I couldn’t sit beside you, so I pleaded for permission. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, so I kept reaching out to people who might be able to give me answers.
I didn’t make those calls to be annoying or difficult. I called because I loved you. I called because I was frightened. I called because the man who had taken care of me for more than two decades was suddenly beyond my reach, and I needed to know that someone was taking care of him, too.
On our wedding day, I promised to stand by your side until death do us part. I never imagined that I would have to learn what those words meant after you were gone. I never imagined that I would be calling strangers, asking whether my husband was okay, or begging to sit beside him when I was told I couldn’t.
I couldn’t follow you into the places where your body was taken. I couldn’t hold your hand or look at you one last time. I had to accept that there were things happening beyond my control, and that no amount of calling could bring you back. That helplessness was unbearable.
But I also know that my love for you did not end the night you died. It was there when I made those first calls, when I cried in the shower, when I asked the medical examiner to use your name, and when I begged to sit beside you. It was there in every question I asked and every desperate attempt to make sure you were being treated with the dignity you deserved.
I couldn’t save you, Rob. I couldn’t protect you from death or change what happened. But I could still love you, and I did. I loved you in the only ways left to me, even when those ways felt small and helpless compared with everything I wanted to do.
Looking back, I feel so much compassion for the woman I was that night and in the days that followed. She was terrified and heartbroken. She was trying to protect her children while making decisions she had never expected to face. She was navigating a world that had suddenly become unfamiliar, all while trying to make sure her husband was okay.
I wish someone had taken her hand and told her that she wasn’t being difficult. That she was his wife, that she had loved him for 26 years, and that of course she wanted to know he was being taken care of. I wish someone had reminded me that I didn’t have to understand every part of the process to be allowed to grieve. I deserved someone to take care of me, too.
Rob, I don’t know if you would have understood all those calls. I can imagine you shaking your head, looking at me with that logical expression of yours, and asking, “Honey, why are you worrying so much?”
And I can imagine myself looking back at you and saying, “Because you’re my husband. Of course I’m worried about you.”
Even now, that would be my answer.
Death separated us physically, but it did not erase the life we built or the love we shared. It did not turn off the part of me that wanted to protect you. I am learning that I cannot take care of you in the ways I once did, and I have to live with questions that may never have the answers I longed for. But I no longer see those calls as something strange or irrational. I see a wife trying to keep a promise in a situation where everything she knew about life and love had changed.
I wish I could have sat beside you. I wish I could have held your hand one last time and told you how much I loved you. I wish I could have looked at you and known that you were being cared for. But I hope you know that I tried. Even when I couldn’t physically be beside you, my heart was still reaching for you.
I never abandoned you, honey. Not in my heart. Not in my love. Not in the promises I made to you.
Even when I couldn’t follow you, I was still reaching for you. Even when I couldn’t hold your hand, I was still trying to make sure you were safe. And even when death did us part, my love never left your side.
I love you, Rob. I always will.
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