Before I continue on with Monday night let me back up just a little bit. For the past little while Clint and I have been looking for a house. We both felt strongly that it was time to try and get back out on our own. Things had been going pretty well for quite a while and we just wanted something that was ours again.
Well the day Clint got rushed to the hospital, Feb 1st, was the day we got the news that our offer had been accepted on the house we wanted. Now this house is not really dream house material but it was in our price range, had enough bedrooms for the boys, and the main selling feature is that it has a huge backyard for the boys to play in.
Well obviously things were a little crazy right then and I didn't know if we should move forward with the house or not. But Clint was pretty adamant that we keep moving forward with it.

Now back to Monday night. Like I said before, it had been a really good day. We were just getting ready to go to bed when all the sudden Clint started feeling really crappy. He started with some pretty severe diarrhea and vomiting and just did not feel good at all. Well this lasted for hours and at some point in the middle of the night he just looked at me and said, 'I'm done. I just can't do it anymore.' At this point I wish I could say I was totally supportive and said I understood or something but I didn't. We had just got the inspection done on the house and there were a bunch of little things wrong with it (little things to him, huge things to me) and I started freaking out. I was crying and saying 'I don't know what to do with this house. You have to help me. I don't know how to do anything'. So instead of consoling him like I should have, he was consoling me, like usual. He told me he was okay and we'd figure everything out.
Well the next morning we had an appointment at AF Hospital to get platelets. Clint really did not want to go, he just wanted to stay in bed. But we finally made it over there and ended up being there for a while getting a chest x-ray and stuff. When we got home our transplant coordinator LaDee called and said she wanted to send someone from hospice over to meet with us just so we'd have an idea of when or if we should go on hospice, which ended up being a huge blessing.
We were supposed to meet our realtor Aaron at the new house on Thursday but Clint decided we should go now, so he called Aaron and a couple friends, Sam & Doug, to meet us at the house that afternoon so we could go over all the issues from the inspection. While there Sam & Doug were able to tell us that everything was fairly minor and would be pretty easy to take care of. Once they told Clint this he turned to me and said 'See they will take care of you. I can die now.' I didn't like that statement at all, but it turned out he knew what he was talking about.
After going to the house we came back home and just hung out the rest of the night. He seemed to be doing alright, just extra tired. We put the boys to bed, watched some TV, and then went in to go to bed. He was laying on the bed and said that he needed to go to the bathroom, so he got up and headed there. I went with him which I'd been doing since he'd passed out a couple weeks earlier. But he didn't make it. He got to the bathroom door and started swaying back and forth, luckily I was right there and caught him and laid him down in the hall, while screaming hysterically for my parents. It was exactly what had happened exactly 2 weeks earlier. I asked him what he wanted me to do, even though I already knew. I asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital, he said no. I asked him if he wanted me to call 911, he said no. I knew he did not want to and could not go through what he'd just been through again. So I had my parents call his parents and call my brother Trevor who is a fireman/emt who just lives down the block. When Trevor got here we took Clints blood pressure and it was 53/32, his oxygen level started falling quickly and he wasn't very coherent. At this point we didn't think he'd make it too much longer so we called his brothers and sisters.
I think he knew it was time, but he just did not want to leave us. He has said that from the beginning, he was never scared to die he was just scared of leaving me and the boys. I think most of his family stuck around most of that night, I don't know for sure because I could not leave Clint's side. I don't think anyone got much sleep, I didn't dare sleep for fear I'd miss his last breath. I don't think any of us thought he'd still be with us in the morning, but he defied all the odds up to the last second.
Wednesday came with Clint still here, but we could tell he was getting more and more uncomfortable and it was getting really hard to get him to swallow any pain pills. Thankfully LaDee had sent hospice to meet with us the day before, so I called them and asked them to come as soon as possible with some pain medicine. Once they finally got here we were able to get him more comfortable which was good. The hospice nurse told us that it wouldn't be long, she didn't think it'd be more than a few hours at most.
Throughout this whole ordeal he was kind of in and out of consciousness. Some times you could get him to answer your questions and other times you couldn't. Some things he said would make complete sense and others no sense at all. He did have some pretty good one liners that day, I wish we would've written some of them down. Once when Camie was trying to give him morphine he told her she was 'royally pissing him off'. And I would get all sorts of responses when I would tell him I love him. Some of them were 'It's all good', and 'that's stupid' (stupid was definitely one of his favorite words that day) but luckily a few times he told me that he loves me too. He was also very agreeable, he would say yes to almost anything. When I was laying next to him I asked someone standing on the other side of the bed 'will you hand me a tissue' and Clint answered 'sure!' such a sweetheart.
Most of Clint's family and my family were at the house all day. The boys were here and would come in and out occasionally. I remember saying, 'man it'd be nice to be a kid your whole world is changing but you go watch a movie and everything's okay'. I'd like to hope it's because we had been preparing them for this for a while, but I think it's because they're just kids. They all came in a few different times and said goodbye to daddy and gave him hugs.
As evening came the weather outside took a turn for the worse, I could hear the rain falling hard against the window as I laid in bed with Clint. He'd been kind of holding steady all day when suddenly he took a turn too. You could hear in his breathing that things had changed. When the hospice nurse came she said that the oxygen wasn't doing much but prolonging death, she told us if we took it off it would speed things along. Well I'd asked Clint a few time throughout the day if he was ready to take it off and every time he would answer with a no, so you can bet I wasn't taking it off if he wasn't ready. Then came the moment, I knew he was ready. It still took me a few minutes, but then I removed his oxygen. A short time passed and while surrounded by most of our family members, and while I held him, he took his final breath. Right when he took his last breath the power went out, not just a flicker, total darkness. It was so crazy, and amazing. My dad brought in flash lights and lanterns, it was so beautiful and peaceful. As hard as it was to let him go it was so comforting to finally see peace on that beautiful face again, it had been such a long time since I'd seen that. It took the mortuary about 3 hours to get to the house and the power was out the entire time, but as soon as they stepped into the house the lights came on. Again crazy, and amazing! I told the boys that daddy had magical powers now:) I like to think he was sending us a sign just to let us know that he's still with us.
Clint fought for every second he had the last 10 months, and I will be eternally grateful for the memories we were able to make with the boys because he fought so hard. He truly is the most amazing man I have ever known. He took care of me up until the last second, and I know he is still taking care of me. He promised me he'd still be around to help me raise these boys, I told him I was not taking sole responsibility for screwing them up. Even though my heart hurts so bad sometimes I can't breathe, I know that he is up there watching over us. And I also know that he is mine for eternity, I just have to make it there. Tonight in his prayer Noah said 'and bless us that we can die' and after he was done I said 'Noah we don't want to die, we want to live' and he said 'but I blessed us that we can die so we can see dad'. I had to explain to him that we will for sure see dad again but we need to live first. I'm so blessed to have these three boys in my life. They are definitely what is keeping me going. I told Clint the day he died 'now I know why Heavenly Father sent us three boys that look exactly like you, it's so I can see your face everyday when I look at them, while you're not here'. How lucky am I?

So this post has been a lot longer than I thought and it has been very emotional for me. So if it doesn't make sense then sorry. I just wanted to try and get things written down for the boys before I forget stuff. I am so, so thankful for all the prayers that have been said and are still being said in behalf of me and the boys. I'm pretty sure that they are the main reason I can get out of bed each day. So please keep them coming, I might need them for a little while. Love you all! Good night.