Andrew Fried: The Life I Knew and its Shattering

Earlier this week, I received an email from Andrew Fried, the husband of Karen Rothman-Fried, the young PS 321 teacher who died tragically on November 15th.

In it he thanked family, friends, and members of the community for their support during an exceptionally difficult time.

It is an amazing testament to the love for me and Karen that the amount of emails, notes, and telephone messages I received is so numerous I am unable to answer them all individually.I hope, therefore, you understand and excuse my use of this mass email. I will try in the coming weeks to email and call you all separately. I also wanted to take a moment and to tell you all a little more about what happened.

I emailed Andrew and asked him if I could put the letter on OTBKB and he said he needed to think about it. This evening, I got another email from Andrew. He told me that he decided to  start his own blog called  http://fryguysthinkings.blogspot.com - "which has a long post I wrote about how Karen and me met/reconnected and the events on the day of her death." He also said I could excerpt any part of it for OTBKB.  

On November 15, my 37th birthday, Karen took me to a matinée of Speed the Plow and then dinner at Aquvit in Manhattan. It was a perfect evening. The next morning began as a normal Sunday. We relaxed for a little while, read the newspaper, and then went to my mother's apartment to meet up with the family and say hi. We had a little brunch and then went for a walk in our neighborhood. We had dinner reservations for later that evening with my mother, brother, and sister-in-law, but at around 2 we decided to grab a bite because Karen needed to eat regularly through the day due to the pregnancy. There is a little Columbian restaurant we'd passed many times and always wanted to try. We decided this was the day for it. We shared a few small dishes and it was wonderful. Karen enjoyed eating, whether it was haute cuisine, like the night before, or just really great down home cooking, like Cafe Bogota. At the end of the meal, when the waiter brought the check, he also brought a comment/mailing list card. Karen remarked how much she liked the meal - rating it a 10 - and asked the waiter for a pen to filling out the card. This is when my life went from a dream to an unimaginable nightmare.

Karen had just begun writing when she suddenly stopped, sat bolt-upright, and looked at me with wide open eyes. I thought she was goofing around and asked what was wrong. She said nothing, but kept her eyes fixed straight ahead and slumped forward onto the table. I immediately knew something was wrong and got up and went to her side. I took her head from the table and pulled her to me. Her eyes were still wide open and unresponsive as she slide lower into the chair. I began to scream for help as she fell against me, out of her chair, and onto the floor with me. I continued to yell for help as people came to assist and began dialing 9-1-1. She was not breathing, nor was she struggling or moving at all as she lay on the floor. The first police officers arrived within a matter of minutes, with fire fighters and EMTs immediately following. I was ushered out of the restaurant by the police officers as I heard someone call for a defibrillator. My world was tumbling out of control.

Time stood still and accelerated all at once. I sat on the sidewalk with two of the police officers as the EMTs continued working inside and was asked questions intermittently - was she on any medication, any medical history, etc. - but could not get any information in return. This was obviously frustrating at the time, but in hindsight I understand that the attention was on rendering aide to Karen and not to answering my questions. I was then led to a police car and driven to the hospital. The ensuing minutes/hours are a blur. I was ushered into a quiet room with my entire family, who had been called by a bystander who took my cellphone and asked if there was anyone she could contact for me. Doctors initially came in to say Karen was being worked on still and that James, our son, had been delivered by emergency cesarean section and taken to the NICU. They had no word on either one's condition.

A short time later the doctors returned, accompanied by the hospital chaplain, and told me that Karen could not be revived, never regained consciousness, and was dead. My life shattered as those words were spoke. I fell to the floor in agony. Every muscle and fiber of my body crying out in pain. Even now I can feel my chest constrict from the memory as I type.

My nadir was yet to be reached. After a little more time passed the doctors came once more to tell me that although they were able to get a pulse from James (with the aide of medication), he could not be saved and died as well. The world's collapse around me was complete.

My family, each one feeling their own devastating grief, surrounded and supported me. They had all found such happiness and joy in Karen, as an individual and not just the woman who meant everything to me, and she had become an immediate and adored member of my family.

I was then taken to see Karen one last time and then upstairs to see and hold my son for the first and only time - I never held him while he was alive. As many of you I am sure know, to try and put into words what I was feeling is an impossibility. It is a devastation that literally transcends comprehension.

It is still impossible for me to believe what has happened; the horror of the day plays over again and again in my head. An autopsy revealed no evident cause of death, i.e., it was not a brain aneurysm, blood clot, etc. The medical examiner is continuing its evaluation, but it could be weeks until more is known, if ever. Indeed I am accepting the very real possibility that a medical explanation for what happened might never be known, just as there is no knowing what the metaphysical explanation is. This reality is bearable only because I was with her when it happened and can assuage my pain with what I saw for myself in that horrible moment. I am 100% certain that she died instantly at the moment she looked at me and before slumping to the table. She didn't struggle for breath or show other signs that she was in pain. It was, as she said as recently as that morning when we saw the end of the Godfather where Marlon Brando has a heart attack while playing with his grandson, the way to go -- quickly and doing something you loved. In this case, Karen was with me, across the table from me, having just finished a meal that she rated a 10 and described as sublime.

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