As I walk along a beautiful trail behind our home feeling the sunshine and listening to the birds sing, I am reminded of this recording I did of Timmy a few short but eternally feeling days ago.

It feels like the best balm for all of us who have been witnessing his final earthly chapter and mourning his sweet departure.

So much has taken place from Thursday night to Sunday night, March 10, 2024 at 10:49pm, when Timmy’s soul took flight.

So many beautiful moments to reflect on and be inspired by for months and years to come.

So much love from friends and family near and far.

So many tender moments in our Nurturing Hearth home.

Timmy’s respirations quietly quickened to 30 breaths per minute as we nestled in together watching a movie and munching noisily on popcorn. I had just massaged his hands and feet and tenderly kissed his increasingly lifeless body from head to toe. The girls affectionately joked that it was the crunching sounds that finally caused him to say, “Enough with that sound already! I’m out of here!”

Anna noticed his breathing had shifted and we paused the movie to gather around. I gave him a small dose of morphine to calm his breathing.

As he stared off into a distant void that seemed far beyond this realm, he drew in his final three breaths and then gently went silent. The pulsing fistula in his left forearm, the place where an artery and vein were surgically threaded together to allow him to receive 3x weekly life sustaining dialysis, went still. The raspy crackling in his chest went quiet.

We collapsed in the deep knowing that it was now our time to wrestle hard with holding on and letting go.

The next three hours we loved on him and prepared to release him into the arms of the transport team who would be taking him to the Medical College of Wisconsin where he donated his body for research.

There is nothing that compares to experiencing the slow release of warmth from the body of one you love…and the creeping cold hard stillness that tells you it’s over. Their fight is finished and their spirit has been set free.

Timmy Eric DeMarco, knowing you has made me a better me.

We committed to a life and marriage of service together. That vow took us to the valleys and the peaks of human experience.

You leave behind a legacy of enjoyment of the simple moments and an unspoken message that a life well lived is a stringing together of these to create a beautiful tapestry.

Our girls are my greatest treasure from our time together. You live on in them and in the hearts and memories of those you spent time with.

I’ll never think of a bird, a pizza, a water color painting, a muzzleloading shotgun, a rusty orange truck, a Grateful Dead song, a glass of wine and a candle, a broken glass, a German Shorthair Pointer, the beautiful people, food and countryside of Italy, pruning tomato plants, Rumicub and Spite and Malice, Jesus, Mary, Paramahansa Yogananda, and the sacrament of communion, and last but not least, cancer and climate change and what it means to thrive in times of crisis’ moments, without thinking of you.

Godspeed my love!

Fly freely and fully into the arms of love that have awaited your return for a lifetime.

Thank you for the time we had together, every last second of it.

I love you to the beyond and back.

And I set you free.

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