In that moment, my life as I knew it flashed before my eyes at rapid speed. Have you ever had that happen before? It was like I saw a single reel of all that is important to me in one quick clip. The news I had just been given was news I wouldn’t think I would hear until I was much older at the least. It’s the kind of news I expected to get as I grew old, gray and frail… Not when I am in my mid 30s and raising my babies. All the questions began running through my mind…
What if he doesn’t make it?
How will I be able to continue to provide the life we know to our children without him?
How can I best use the life insurance to provide for our family?
What if we aren’t given enough time to figure it all out and have a plan in place?
The doctor explained that my husband had a heart attack at some point in the last two years, and we are very lucky to have caught his condition when we did. Mark had one artery in his heart that was 100% blocked, and had been for some time now. The other two arteries… well, they were each 90% blocked and working diligently to grow new vessels over to keep blood flow going to the part of his heart that wasn’t receiving any.
As I looked at the pictures on the screen in his hospital room that day, I starred in disbelief that this heart I was looking at could even be his. He is just 47 years old. We have young children at home. Yes, I know heart troubles run in both his family and mine, but we are still so young yet. Are they sure they didn’t get them mixed up with someone else?
The reality set in over the coming days and weeks. My husband would need open heart triple bypass surgery. In all this, I guess the good news was it didn’t need done as an emergency, but that left us to sit and wait. Wait with our thoughts, our worries, our hope, and our faith.
I left the hospital that day with my husband and my mother-in-law to return home to my mom and our three babies who were 10, 7, and 3 at the time. I knew they would want to know right away what the doctor said about their daddy, especially my oldest. I knew she would understand more so than the other children, because she had seen my mother go through open heart surgery several years before. As a matter of fact, both my mom and Mark’s mom had been through open heart surgery before. So while we weren’t strangers to this procedure, it just felt different this time.
This was my husband having surgery, open heart surgery at that. He is our world. He is the one we look to for advice and guidance when it comes to making decisions in our home. He is the breadwinner. He makes our world go round.
Mark and I met while I was in college. I lived in Pennsylvania at the time, and he lived in Florida. I was looking for a way to make an income while I completed my education when a friend introduced me to the life insurance business. It appealed to me because I could make more money than I was making working retail on the weekends, while spending less time doing so. I loved the thought of having more time with my family, and still being able to make a living. I got licensed and began working with the same company where Mark worked. We met several times at training meetings during the almost two years before we started dating. I had no idea he would have any interest in someone like me until he expressed otherwise.
Here we are 14 years later, married for 12 of them with 3 beautiful children. While life has had its ups and downs, like it does for all of us, life with Mark has always been an adventure. One I am grateful to be a part of all these years. We have been given many blessings along the way, as well as our fair share of challenges, and this one would prove to be no different. In the end, we would walk through it together. That didn’t make it any less scary, of course.
The weeks of waiting, appointments, and testing leading up to the surgery were not easy. Maybe you have felt the uneasiness in the unknown before too?
Our first step was to meet the surgeon the following week. We would go over the procedure, get our questions answered, and gain a better understanding of what to expect and a timeline for when the surgery would take place. However, mother nature had other plans and sent a hurricane our way. It hit our area on the exact day Mark’s appointment was scheduled. This meant there would be more waiting, more thoughts, more questions, more time to think of all the “What ifs?”
In the meantime, my mind continued to race. It bounced from planning for the worst to the peace of hoping for the best. Mark and I would discuss every scenario we could think of in these weeks. The funny thing was that we both had these types of discussions with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of families between us over the years in the insurance business, but we always knew we had life insurance. We knew that financially if I died, he could take care of the kids and vice versa. What we never revisited was how our life had changed since the last time we mapped out exactly how to use the money, and what changes may need to be made to our plan now. So please, if you haven’t dusted off your old policies and taken a good look at what is covered, and discussed how you will use it… take the time to do that now. Don’t wait.
We finally were able to meet the surgeon, and Mark’s surgery was scheduled for two days after my birthday. We celebrated with a date night, and one last meal out as a family. My mother-in-law drove back to our home from North Carolina for the surgery. A great many friends volunteered to care for our children while we went with Mark to the hospital. The pieces were all falling into place, and the one thing left was to pray for a successful surgery and recovery.
Surgery day arrived and we headed to the cardiac unit of our local hospital and waited for surgery to begin. The hours I waited with Mark’s mom while his procedure was carried out felt like a lifetime. I was ready to hear that everything went well, and his prognosis was good. I was ready for the healing to begin. I was ready for my husband to be healthy again. Though the reality was while he would be better… mended… he would never be completely healthy again. His condition, even though fixed, would bring about a lifestyle change in various ways. None the less, we both were willing to make the changes necessary to put our best foot forward toward a healthier lifestyle.
In the days and weeks that followed, Mark grew stronger and I reflected on all that we had been through. Yes, we did it together. Yes, our situation turned out favorable and fortunate. I understand how easily our situation could have had a very different outcome. I am grateful for the medical staff who worked diligently to help my husband, and I am grateful that God wasn’t ready for him yet.
I am also incredibly grateful for my husband. I’m thankful for his strength and leadership. I am grateful he loves me and our children so much, to have put a plan of life insurance in place to provide for us financially if he dies before me. I am grateful that in those tough moments of life, we chose to continue paying the premiums on his life insurance policies so that they are still in place today. Why? Because while he can get more life insurance, he will not be able to get another policy like any of the ones he has now. Mark always says, “Money doesn’t buy life insurance, your health does.” I have never understood that statement better than I do now. Overall, I am grateful to have yet another day to love him and make memories together with him.
If you do not have life insurance, or if you have some but are unsure what it covers or if it is enough, please reach out to us. We can help you read through your policy and understand exactly what you have so you can plan ahead too.
Maybe you are young, and don’t understand why someone your age would need to think about life insurance yet. Please reach out to us, so we can share some information with you.
We are here to help.
Michelle Womack
Eagle Vision Financial