In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, things felt more impossible than ever. The holidays weren’t filled with joy, and being alone in the house where the family had made so many memories, surrounded by Franklin’s clothing and gadgets and favorite snacks, was almost unbearable. Dealing with the estate was mentally taxing. It was the same thing that had happened to my son. Within a few short moments, he was gone, and once again, like that terrible moment just five months before, Cathy’s world came to a screeching stop. There was blood in there,” she says.Ĭathy dialed 911, and Franklin was rushed to the hospital, where the ER doctor turned to Cathy and said something so unfathomable it was like the universe was playing a sick joke on her: a blot clot had broken off from somewhere in her husband’s body and hit his heart, where it was blocking the flow of blood to his brain and organs. “I was looking at it and knew something wasn’t right. Cathy followed to make sure he was OK, but when she caught a glimpse of the toilet bowl, her heart skipped a beat. “I told him to go lay down.” He climbed in bed to rest, then suddenly jumped up and ran to the bathroom to vomit. “He was a bit nauseous, and I’d been feeling like that all day, so I assumed I’d just given him a little bug,” Cathy remembers. Suddenly, Franklin said he wasn’t feeling well. But on the evening of July 4, everything changed again. “My husband and I leaned on each other and the church to hold each other up, just trying to get through this.” “I knew something wasn’t right”īy summer, Cathy and Franklin were trying to live their lives as best they could through their grief. He’d graduated both high school and college early and had a master’s degree. This was my youngest son, and he was amazing. But his heart never started beating again-a recent bout of pneumonia had triggered blood clots in his lungs, one of which fatally traveled to his heart. When they arrived, emergency personnel were working to resuscitate him, on the same square of sidewalk where he’d fallen face down. In a panic, Cathy and Franklin raced to CJ’s house, which wasn’t too far from theirs. “He told me, ‘you have to come right away, CJ collapsed on the pavement while walking his dog, and I don’t think he’s breathing,’” she recalls. It was a friend of her youngest son, Charles (aka CJ), and he was calling with terrible news.
Then one day in February 2019, her phone rang. “We just did everything together, from deciding what we were going to make for dinner every night, to decorating for the holidays, to finding fun activities to fill our weekends with,” Cathy says. She retired, and she and her husband, Franklin, then 70, got into a new groove that saw them basically glued together. “It felt like the right time in my life to take a pause and really start enjoying life,” says Cathy. Her sons were grown and building their own lives, and traveling meant she didn’t get to spend as much time as she’d like with her husband of 44 years. And the one thing that helped her the most during those unimaginably dark times was walking.Īs the year 2018 came to a close, Cathy was reevaluating her life after decades in a high-powered job growing tech startups. Then two unexpected tragedies changed her life forever, and she’s spent every day since slowly building herself back up. Cathy Bradley, 73, had it all-a doting husband, two sons, a successful career, and a home she loved in Orange, Connecticut.
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