When our daughter, Tatiana, was born, my 29-year-old husband cried tears of joy. Then he pleaded with me to make another baby right away.
“I’m worried about having two little ones so close together,” I told Erik. “How will that be fair to Tatiana?”
“We got this, Hyla. Really. And they’ll be built in playmates.”
So, since Erik and I had finally reached the point in our marriage in which the simple fling of the middle finger could end most arguments, I agreed.
On Easter Sunday, 2003, I was seven months pregnant with our second daughter. Our girls would be nineteen months apart. And, as I watched Erik kiss all over Tatiana’s round cheeks, I knew that I had made the right decision.
Then, just when he got up to make the coffee, Tatiana and I watched in horror as Erik slid down the kitchen counter and died.
Just like that.
One minute we were laughing and thirty-five minutes later, I was being asked which of his organs I was willing to give away.
I wanted to know why. Why did this happen?
Why, two months later, was I holding a picture of my dead husband while giving birth to our second baby?
But I began realising that it wasn’t about the why. It was about the what. What would I do with my pain so that I could make meaning of my tragedy?
That’s when I knew I had to share my story to give hope to others.
For the past ten years, I have been advocating for widows, women, defibrillators in schools, and a treatment for Brugada Syndrome—the sudden death cardiac condition both of our daughters, unfortunately, inherited from Erik.
