Bill Byrn was always smiling. It’s a memory COVID-19 can’t take away, his wife says
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It took Barbara Byrn almost three months to retrieve her husband’s ashes, she recently recalled by phone.
While his battle with the coronavirus was relatively short, the pain and anguish her husband’s death left in its wake has been prolonged, she said.
Nearly eight months later, she’s still taking it day by day, she explained.
She misses the long Harley Davidson rides, and the trips up the Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca in the couple’s 41-foot trawler.
She misses her husband’s laugh, and the way his eyes squinted when he smiled.
She misses the way he made other people smile.
On April 24, Bill Byrn died of complications related to COVID-19.
A retired auto body and fender instructor at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Byrn was 69.
For Barbara, who had been with Bill for 29 years at the time of his death, the loss was sudden and unmooring.
When her husband woke up early in the morning of April 15 complaining that he couldn’t breath, she had no way of knowing that when paramedics took him away from their Midland home it would be the last time she saw him in person, she said.
“(The paramedics) would not come in the house. This is when (COVID-19) first started. They made me take a chair out on the porch, and I had to get him dressed. My husband is six foot, 280 pounds. A big boy, you know? He couldn’t walk,” Byrn recalled.
“I got him out to the ambulance, and that was the last time I saw him.”
Bill and Barbara Byrn’s relationship began inconspicuously nearly three decades earlier, at Marilyn’s on Puyallup Avenue.
At the time Barbara was a bartender at the restaurant, which was long ago closed.
Bill lived on his boat, and had a habit of visiting the 24-hour diner and bar every Friday for dinner with a group of friends, Byrn recalled.
The rest was history.
“He had a lot of my friends, and I knew a lot of his friends, but we never knew each other. I wouldn’t go out with him at first, because I never dated my customers,” Byrn said.
“But we started dating and that was it. That was 1991. Been together ever since,” she continued. “He always had a smile. Always jovial. He was an all-around good guy, and we just clicked.”
Over the years that followed, the strength of the couple’s relationship only grew stronger, Byrn said. They were officially married in 2012.
They shared joys together, like watching their children from previous relationships blossom into adults.
They shared struggles, like family tragedies and battles with cancer. They both survived bouts with the disease, Byrn said, in Bill’s case Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Through it all, Bill remained a steadfast partner and dedicated father. He was incredibly proud of his two daughters, who now both work in education, and enjoyed nothing more than to spend time with his six grandchildren, Byrn recalled.
“He went to all the baseball games, all the basketball games. He just loved to be around the kids. That’s just Bill,” Byrn said.
“He’s a people person. It just made him smile.”
While discussing the husband she lost to COVID-19, Bill’s smile is a memory Byrn returned to often.
It’s one of the things that will stick with her, always, she said.
To help remind her, she keeps a tiny bit of his ashes in a pewter dolphin pendant that hangs on her rear-view mirror.
After Bill’s death, she gave one to each of his daughters and kept one for herself.
“That’s so dad could go travel with us,” Byrn said of the remembrance.
“Because he loved to go do things.”
— If you’ve lost a loved one to COVID-19, we’d like to tell your story. Please email us at newstips@thenewstribune.com.
This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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