‘Despair, fear and sadness’, reported Glenn about David – 09/05/2023 – Mônica Bergamo

About a month before the death of former federal deputy David Miranda, which took place this Tuesday (9), journalist Glenn Greenwald reported in a long text the challenges he had been facing since his husband was admitted to an ICU on 6 August of last year, and the discoveries that strengthened him so that he could continue to support his family and himself in recent months.

“The despair, fear and sadness are on a level unlike anything I’ve experienced,” wrote Glenn, in one of the rare moments when he was willing to talk about his personal experience with her husband’s health crisis.

The two had been together for 17 years and had two children together.

In the text, which was published on a personal page, the journalist stated that “the unexpected and repeated flirtations with death” experienced by the 37-year-old companion were nothing compared to the saddest situations he had ever experienced until then. And that the fact of having to help the children deal with the absence of a parent and prepare them for the possibility of death made everything even more difficult.

“I cannot resolve the issue that is causing them so much suffering. I have never encountered greater pain than the helplessness of watching my children suffer without being able to make the suffering stop,” he wrote.

“At the same time, this responsibility to care for, support and empower our children has been my most potent source of motivation and energy. The times when I have been able to somehow ease their suffering, or when they they offer me moments of lightness and relief, they are moments that I will never forget”, he added.

Glenn also reported that there were three occasions when he was warned by doctors that the former deputy had very low chances of survival – but that he was improving month by month.

“This progress, however, is invariably slow, incremental, arduous and almost always interrupted by mishaps and complications that are alarming, devastating, emotionally destructive and, on some occasions, potentially fatal”, said the journalist. “Yet, in ways that doctors to this day have a hard time fully explaining, David went through all these crises and continues to get better.”

The journalist said that, recently, she managed to spend up to 12 hours with her husband in the hospital, where they watched movies and series together and managed to talk. “It’s hard to express the amount of joy, happiness and gratitude I feel when we can share these moments — no matter how small. It’s a joy unlike any other I’ve ever felt,” she said.

“These days, especially on weekends, I wake up excited and anxious. Not because I have anything glamorous or exotic scheduled. It’s because, at least for now, I can do something that until August of last year I could do every day and considered it trite, trivial and without cause for celebration: sitting down and making small talk with the person I was born for, my soul mate, my best friend and the love of my life,” said Glenn.

Despite all the burden of the eight months of hospitalization, Glenn said, David showed no changes in his personality, memory, sense of humor and even in the way he “complained affectionately”, “as only a 17-year-old spouse is capable of complaining and grumble”.

In the article, the journalist concludes that the experience brought, above all, the notion that health is not a guarantee given to anyone, and that the active search for a feeling of gratitude helped him to have another perspective to take the last few months, while her husband remained in the ICU.

“During the first two months of David’s illness, the worst part of each day was waking up. In those first few seconds after awakening—before my defenses kicked in, before I could even orient myself to the state of being awake—a wave of suffering flooded me when I remembered what was happening,” said Glenn.

“That only changed when—following some sage advice for which I am enormously grateful—I deliberately began to look for gratitude as the first thing I woke up to. Instead of wallowing in despair and focusing on what was bad (David’s absence and his illness life-threatening), I chose to focus on what was good: David is alive; our children are healthy and amazing, well-adjusted, happy, and loving; I am healthy and able to do everything that can be done for David and our children. “, he said further.

Below are some excerpts from Glenn’s account:

“Although in my life I have gone through those sad situations to which we are all subject – the loss of my grandparents and my parents in particular -, the unexpected and repeated flirtations with death that my 37-year-old husband, healthy and fit , has been going through are unlike anything I could have imagined. The desperation, fear and sadness are on a level unlike anything I’ve experienced. It continues to permeate, physically and emotionally, every second of my day.”

[…]

“I won’t even try to explain the feeling of having to tell my children and David’s family and friends that it was time to go to the hospital, who knows for the last time, to see him. putting aside the grim task of dealing with this news in favor of helping our children do the same.Yet, in ways that doctors to this day have a hard time fully explaining, David went through all these crises and continues to improve. “

[…]

“Obviously, there aren’t many leisure options in an ICU room. Sitting next to your bed to talk and watch series and movies together is basically all we can do for now. It’s hard to express the amount of joy, happiness and gratitude that I feel when we can share these moments – however small they are. It’s a joy unlike any other I’ve ever felt.”

[…]

“How many times in this process have I believed he was finally getting well, only to get a call from the doctors and watch him get worse again. That is perhaps one of the cruelest things about this whole process. Even on the best of days there is a voice in the back of my mind. deep in my head that wonders if there isn’t another infection lurking, or a virus about to return, to once again force doctors to administer a toxic medicine that will demand even more of your liver and your bone marrow.”

[…]

“The reality is that this did not arise with David’s hospitalization. This has always been true. We had not realized it. Since 2005, when David and I began to share our lives, build our careers together, we began to create our children, we woke up and slept and ate and left thinking – due to our age and our arrogance – that we had decades of health ahead of us. As if it were right. As if the universe gave us a guarantee, a contract that allowed us to believe that that was ours by right, and that nobody could take from us. We thought it was a certainty. And for that, we didn’t give it due value.”

[…]

“There’s nothing they can offer me – money, travel, success, gifts – that comes close to the intensity of the joy I feel to be able to talk to David again about anything and everything: remembering stories from the past, making plans for the future. (maybe adopt a girl so our kids can have a little sister?), hear his thoughts on my new show on Rumble that he’s finally getting a chance to watch (mostly positive reviews, but not forgetting a few occasional aesthetic critiques , format and content), talk about the various issues surrounding raising our children, and hear him complain that I over-praised certain movies and series I made him watch.”

[…]

“It’s extraordinary how much time we spend our lives chasing after the things we’ve been taught to crave and aspire to when what makes us happiest and most fulfilled are right under our noses – often undervalued because they seem simple or familiar. losing them has been able to make us appreciate the things we have.”

[…]

“The lack of permanence of the things that bring us the greatest happiness does not make them any less valuable. On the contrary. Their impermanence is the reason to hold on to them, hold on to them, cherish and honor them every day that we have them and we can do this.”

_{with BIANKA VIEIRA, KARINA MATIAS It is MANOELLA SMITH}