Darla Lee Urbantas

Darla had passed away peacefully in little or no pain early in the evening on December 27, 2021 at Emory University Hospital Hospice ward. Here is her story I had shared with her during her time on earth with me. I had submitted her best friend’s obituary done by Teri Koch that covers a lot of what I missed in her earlier days of life.

Darla Urbantas this fall and winter had been in Emory University Hospital for more than 3 ½ months to undergo bone cancer treatment and bone marrow transplant procedure. Everything was looking so positive in the first few weeks after Chemotherapy. It was then she was hit with bout after bout with bacterial and viral infections and her body suffered accordingly. Even in the face of tremendous odds she kept fighting every day to get better and rarely gave up hope. Two days prior to her passing were playing the board game Sorry and computer Solitaire game, and talking to her best friends late in the evening. She was so full of life and desire to continue to live onwards. That next morning, she was comatose and stayed in that state until her demise. I stayed by her side every day in the hospital for her entire stay. The evening before her passing I was in bed beside her for more than 6 hours and I talked to her constantly and every 30 minutes I had asked her to give me a kiss. She did do, one last very passionate kiss that will need to last me for the rest of my life and one I will never forget.

Her passing has left a hole so large in my heart that will take so long to heal and not breakdown and cry. I no longer have my soul mate, best friend and confidant, companion, spell checker, cooking partner, passionate gardener, and loving grandmother to my son’s two beautiful children.

Almost 17 years ago Darla and I had met using a dating service since both of us were professional people and never had the time to meet a compatible potential person we can fully relate to each other and plan our futures together. We hit it off instantly and dated for more than 8 months before I proposed to her. She loved my family and got the opportunity to meet my daughter who passed away not too long after due to diabetes complications. Brigita my daughter loved her so much but passed way too early and Darla had helped me at that time in need at my most painful time I had experienced ever at that time. She was the most caring, passionate and loving woman I knew and that confirmed I have the woman of my dreams in my hands.

Darla faced brutal hardship headlong in her life. She had to take a job transfer from her favorite city at San Francisco to Atlanta due to her new boss’ inabilities to manage people and projects that lost her technical position. She took a transfer and it worked okay for a short time before they closed down that department she worked at as a cost cutting measure. She worked for them for almost 30 years. She worked temporary positions until she started up as a claims adjuster for her original insurance company, dropping down from a Management role to the bottom of the job positions. She was so successful in every job she did. At her new position she won rewards for being the most efficient, most compassionate employee with the highest ratings from customers. That was not enough for her company they always wanted more insurance claims completed faster and faster and she fought Management who had no people skills. Darla was praised by upper Management but not her immediate managers who were

envious of her compassion, capabilities to fine detail to complete clients claims with no rebuttals or reviews.

We married on April 15, 2006 and we were happy and very strong together but we faced a lot of brutal hardships in our marriage from outside forces. A week prior to our wedding we had a F2 tornado hit my home the day before the home sale paperwork is too be signed. We faced a financial burden to carry the purchase our new home along with tornado damaged home that took 5 months to repair and sell it a year later during the time of home sale depression.

We got over that episode and then Darla was working 6-7 days a week up to 12-hour days for months at her insurance company dealing with massive weather-related emergencies. One Saturday we went to her doctor to get relief for the worst headache she had ever suffered. With only pain relievers given that did little to combat her splitting headache we went to the emergency hospital the following day to try to find her relief from the pain. She was quickly admitted into the Intensive Care Unit, they believed she was suffering a stroke. That evening the neurosurgeon had put her in a medical induced coma to help save her life, she had a massive blood clot in her head. For more than 6 weeks she was kept in a medical induced coma to heal slowly. Her neurosurgeon said to me after she woke up that Darla was his miracle child, he brought back from the edge of death back to life. Her mother Peggy and I stayed with her for several months to make sure we brought her home significantly recovered after massive physical and occupational therapy for more than a month. After a year of close monitoring, tons of doctor visitation she was pronounced recovered and went back to work. She went back to work full time for a year and underwent the same massive pressure of working more case files and high work hours than can be humanly be completed in the correct manner to satisfy the customer needs. The massive stress she worked under caused a second stroke when she suffered the identical massive headache. The doctor’s caught it early enough to have it treated without getting in an induced coma like the last time. Weeks later she came home and started her pain recovering process. Within 6 months of her second stoke she was released by her insurance company after putting in more than 30 years of work. For the next 2 years she fought for Disability Insurance coverage, providing all the relevant information to backup her situation. It was rejected 3 times and she fought to get it to go to Court. The legal firm her insurance company provided her to represent her that she had paid for years from her pay check was absolutely useless. The fourth substituted lawyer for her that walked in the picture knew absolutely nothing as they went in the court room. The judge on the bench asked the lawyer if he knew what he was doing in court representing her, he said “duh”. The Judge told the lawyer to be seated and shut up, he asked Darla a lot of relevant quested for 20 minutes. The Judge finally asked work representatives if they would hire Darla and they all said they would not because she was incapable to work more than an hour before she would need to rest or work on other short-term tasks. The judge was so bewildered and in shook as looked at the Disability Lawyer and said why on earth did you deny her claim. Seconds later he stated to that Disability lawyer that they had no right to deny her disability claim and it is effective immediately. Darla did all the work to get her disability claim and her insurance legal hired firm did absolutely nothing. Her insurance company had requested the $25,000 given to her that she has paid into over 30 years to be paid to the legal firm for the work they billed them. They screwed Darla royally big time again.

Years later I lost my job at the company I worked for 20 years as they purged the older and higher paid senior staff. I had always above average to excellent job reviews. The company purged the technical department and sales staff to make the Paper Division attractive to sell to a competitor. I received a layoff payment to help find another job, but it was done at the time unemployment was at greater than 14%. After several hundred work applications I had a job offer after 18 months, 900 miles away from home in NJ. I moved to NJ in a small apartment and Darla tried to join me as often as possible. After moving our belongings out of our home to sell our house in a buyer’s market we ended up wasting multiple 10’s of thousands of dollars listening to our real estate agent. We ended up paying for the expensive tiny rental in NJ and our home in GA for 7 painfully long years being separated as Darla lived part time in both locations. I retired early from that toxic and deceitful company that I hated for 6 ½ years as I tried 100’s of job applications without luck.

One very sad event that had devastated Darla was the mystery illness her older brother was suffering. He was approaching his 60’s and his body was deteriorating quickly and none of the doctors for years knew what was happening to him. It took a trip to the Mayo Clinic to identify the illness as MSA, a terminal illness. Darla droves almost 800 miles to his residence for weeks at a time and later driving 900 miles to NJ from home to stay with me for a week. She repeated these long-distance trips for more than a year, it was a truly exhausting effort on her part driving in two opposite directions. She loved her brother and me deeply and she sacrificed all that time to tend and nurture the two of us without asking anything she needed from us. She did not get enough credit in her massive effort in helping her brother to the end of his life. He passed away on December 27, 2016. On the way back from his funeral service the both of us got sick. Her illness progressed to catching pneumonia, in which she stayed in a hospital for more than a month to recover. She was so exhausted that year driving several thousands of miles a month but she did not complain. We could never thank her enough in her sacrifice to maintain our spirts high and never ask anything from us. I love you so much for doing this when we really needed you the most. The car she drove had over 250,000 miles doing all these and other trips over the years.

We had a wonderful time together afterwards as we planned our long future. We went on vacations ourselves and visiting family and friends. We went to Hawaii and brought Justin and his wife and our first grandchild there. Darla had her first opportunity to hold our grandson Daelan. Several years later we spent our first Christmas with Justin’s family in northern British Columbia for almost 2 weeks in a frozen environment but full of happiness and joy. A month later we enjoyed ourselves in sunny Acapulco for a week. We really needed that vacation time together. We did several other vacations visiting resorts, family and friends.

Over the past couple of years Darla spent a lot of time assisting her father, tending to his needs at his retirement home. It was almost a fulltime job attending to his requirements, we missed out a lot of quality time in those years. In between all that she had the passion to tend and nurture a beautiful garden in our front yard. She loved the butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds visiting all her flowers she nurtured to life. She expanded our flower gardens over 15 years living here and she had found her Zen zone. She captured thousands of flower pictures on her phone she was so proud of and so was I. It may be close to a hundred degrees outside but she didn’t care, she loved working there.

We walked almost every day 5 miles with me along the heavy wooded trails in our neighborhood to maintain and build up her strength for the upcoming fight she knew she had to face. She was silent about this silent terror that was slowly killing her. She knew that the bone cancer that was identified 14 years ago was in remission but in the last years it was taking a heavier toll on her every month. She did not have the strength she had just a few months ago. Her neurologist told her it was time to face another battle of her life, her blood production is dropping and it needs to be addressed very soon. She talked about it at night and it started to scare me. Darla had the positive attitude and drive to move forward to fight this silent killer. The trip to the hospital started in mid-September and both of us were very positive as we held our hands tightly to face the upcoming battle. The chemotherapy was brutal on her after a week but she continued to smile and we both hugged each other for the next step in her healing process. Things were not great as she started to suffer infection after infections with little immunity, she had left to fight the microscopic killers affecting her. She fought and she fought with everything she had and I was beside her everyday holding her hand and giving her hugs and kisses. Each week over the 3 ½ months there she took one step forwards to later several steps backwards. The mass assault of unstoppable infections even with antibiotics after new antibiotics was making her weaker and thinner. My eyes did not want to see her losing the battle of her life, it could not happen to my soul mate, my love, my partner. This cannot happen to her and me, I would not allow it, it cannot happen, I won’t let it, we suffered enough together we deserve a break. We had so many people rooting and praying for her, she had to make it, she had to. It was unconceivable to allow this to happen to her, she deserves to live longer to enjoy the need to hold her first grand daughter we only saw 3,000 miles away that COVID-19 stopped us from travelling and only allowed us to see them by video chat. To see the grand children, grow up and maybe see them get married and have children of their own. She deserved that, and to get old and gray with me and enjoy our golden years together. She paid such a heavy price over her life time and yet she rarely complained, she did not deserve to die. My reality was shattered, she did not make it, our future is no longer a possibility, it vanished in front of my eyes as she took her last breath and my grief poured out like a mountain river that shattered a dam and flowed uncontrollably down a steep mountainside. My eyes were so wet and in disbelief as it happened, the next sight I could not fathom, I was watching her pulse slowly over time get weaker and weaker until it stopped. My lovely, beautiful, wonderful, passionate wife had left me alone to walk the earth without her. I collapsed as this happened, my heart was totally broken, it will never be the same. My heart went out to Darla that night where ever she maybe, goodbye my love, goodbye until we meet again in the other life.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.winkenhoferpineridgefuneralhome.com for the Urbantas family.