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My Husband Stopped Climbing the Ladder to Hang the Christmas Lights Three Years Ago. He Had Been an Electrician for Thirty-Four Years. The Ladder Had Been His Life. Last September a Woman I Had Never Met Told Me Something at a Funeral That Finally Made Me Understand What Had Happened on the Third Rung. I am writing this because Pauline texted me on a Sunday morning last weekend. She said her daughter-in-law had been asking about us. She wanted to know if I had ever written down what we talked about on the bench behind the church hall. I told her I would. I am writing it down now. For her daughter-in-law. For Pauline. For Carl. For Howard. For the next wife who has been watching her husband walk past a ladder in his own garage and pretending she has not been watching. I am Annette. I am sixty-three years old. I retired four years ago after thirty-one years as an elementary school music teacher in our school district. I am married to my husband Howard for thirty-eight years. Most people call him Howard. I have called him Howie since 1985. He is sixty-seven. He retired four years ago after thirty-four years as a residential electrician. He ran his own small business out of our garage for thirty-two of those years. We have two grown sons. Three grandchildren. The oldest grandchild is eleven. I want to tell you about the ladder. Because the ladder is what I had been carrying alone for three years before Pauline sat down on a bench behind a church hall with me last September. I want to back up first and tell you who Howard was for the thirty-four years before he retired. Howard was an electrician. He had been a residential electrician for thirty-four years. He had been on ladders for thirty-four years. He had owned every kind of ladder a residential electrician owns. The six-foot step ladder. The eight-foot. The twelve-foot extension. The twenty-four-foot extension for the high-roofline jobs. He had a small fleet of ladders in our garage. He had built shelves in the garage to hang them on so that they hung off the wall like a museum display. Ladders had been his entire professional life. He had also, for thirty-five years of our marriage, been the man who put up the Christmas lights on our house. He went up the ladder on the first Saturday in December. He did the roofline along the front of the house. He did the porch trim. He did the dogwood tree in the front yard. He did it all in one day. He came down at sunset. He did it in reverse on the Saturday after New Year's. I had been watching him do it for thirty-five years. I had been the woman in the front yard with the cup of coffee handing up strings of lights and watching my husband on a ladder for thirty-five years. I want to tell you about the first Saturday in December three years ago. It was a cold morning. About thirty-two degrees. The kind of morning when you can see your breath in the front yard. Howard had set the ladder up next to the front porch at about nine in the morning. He had the strings of lights laid out on the porch the way he always laid them out. I had been making coffee in the kitchen. I came out the front door with two cups of coffee. Howard had been on the third rung of the ladder. He had been on the third rung for a few seconds longer than he needed to be on the third rung. I had not been looking at him at first. I had been balancing the two coffee cups and watching where I was putting my feet on the porch steps. When I looked up, he was on the third rung. Standing still. Both hands on the side rails of the ladder. He was looking down at the porch. I said: "Howie. Are you okay?" He said: "Honey. I am fine. I am just feeling a little off. I am going to come down for a minute." He climbed back down off the ladder. He stood at the bottom of the ladder for a moment. He said: "Annette. I am going to go inside and sit for an hour. The cold got me. I am going to come back out." He went inside. He sat in his recliner in the living room for an hour. He came back out at ten. He went back to the ladder. He climbed three rungs. He stopped on the third rung again. He climbed back down. He stood next to the ladder on the front porch in his coat with his hands in his pockets for a long moment. He said: "Annette. I am going to call Justin from down the street. His father owes me a favor for the wiring I did in his garage last summer. I am going to have Justin do the lights this year." He went inside and made the phone call. Justin came over at noon. He was nineteen. He did all the Christmas lights in about three hours. Howard stayed inside. I stood in the front yard with my coffee and watched a nineteen-year-old neighbor put up our Christmas lights. The next year Justin did them. Last year Justin did them. The ladder had been on the hooks in the garage for three years. Howard had walked past it most days of his life. He had not climbed it. I want to tell you what I knew and what I had not been letting myself know about that third rung. Howard had not been telling me what had happened on the third rung that first December. He had been telling me he had been a little off from the cold. I had been telling myself the same thing. But I had been the wife of an electrician for thirty-five years. I had been the one who had answered the phone at the small business in the garage for thirty-two years. I had heard Howard talk to other electricians. I had heard him talk about the older guys in the trade. I had heard what he had said about the men he had known who had stopped going up ladders. I had known what the third rung had meant. He had felt something in his chest. He had not told me what it had been. I had not asked. We had not been talking about it for three years. Howard's blood pressure had been creeping up for about four years. He had a home cuff. He had bought it three years before he retired. He had been taking the reading every morning at the kitchen counter at seven thirty for over six years. He had been writing the numbers in a small notebook he kept in the drawer next to the cuff. I had been looking at the notebook on the mornings when Howard was in the bathroom or out at the mailbox. I had not told Howard I had been looking. The numbers had been moving in the wrong direction for four years. Howard had been going to Dr. Pellegrini every six months. Dr. Pellegrini had been telling Howard at his last two visits that they were going to need to seriously talk about a medication. Howard had been telling Dr. Pellegrini he wanted to keep doing the lifestyle work. Howard had been doing the lifestyle work. Walking forty minutes a day, six days a week. Cutting the bourbon to weekends only. Eating the way our daughter-in-law's mother had told us we should be eating since she had moved here from Greece five years ago. The numbers had stayed creeping. Howard had been buying time. Dr. Pellegrini had been giving him time. Two cycles in a row. Howard had also, over the last three years, been quietly handing other things to other people. The Saturday morning fishing trips with Carl on the lake. Howard and Carl had been fishing together every Saturday morning from April through October for thirty-eight years. About two and a half years ago, Howard had started begging off. He had told Carl he had errands. He had not had errands. Carl had been calling Howard every Friday evening for two and a half years to invite him. Howard had been saying no. The basement stairs. Howard had stopped going down to the basement about two years ago. We have a deep basement in our house with a workshop and Howard's old electrical supplies and the storage bins for the seasonal decorations and his fishing tackle. He had been having Justin come over to bring up bins. The recliner at eight. Howard had been going up to bed with me at ten for thirty-eight years. About two years ago, he had started falling asleep in his recliner at eight in the evening. He had been waking up at one in the morning and going up to bed at one fifteen. I had been going up to bed at ten without him. The way he had been carrying himself. He had been holding his upper chest still when he walked. He had stopped swinging his arms the way he used to swing his arms. He had been a man who walked like he was protecting something. I had been watching all of it. I had not been telling anyone. I had been carrying it alone for two and a half years. In September last year, Vincent died. Vincent had been a contractor in our town for forty-some years. Vincent and Howard had worked together on dozens of jobs over thirty years. Howard did the electrical. Vincent did the framing and the finish carpentry. They had been close. Their wives had been close — Eileen and I had been in the same book club for fifteen years. Vincent had died on his couch on a Sunday afternoon at sixty-eight. Eileen had walked into the living room with two glasses of iced tea and had found him. The funeral was on a Thursday. Howard had been too torn up to come. He had said he would come to the wake on Wednesday. He had not come to the wake. He had been in his recliner that whole weekend before the funeral. The news had been on at low volume. He had not been crying. He had been sitting. I had driven out to the funeral alone on Thursday morning. I had sat in the third row of the church. After the service, I had gone to the reception in the church hall. I had been at the coffee table pouring myself a cup of coffee when a woman I had seen across the church but had not recognized came up to me. She was about my age. She had a small plate in her hand. She said: "Are you Annette?" I said: "I am." She said: "I am Pauline. I am Carl's wife. Carl has been Howard's fishing partner for thirty-eight years. I do not think we have ever met. But Carl has been talking about Howard for almost two years." I said: "Pauline. Yes. I have known about you. I did not know your face." She said: "Annette. Can we sit down somewhere quiet? I want to talk to you about something." We went out to the small garden behind the church hall. There was a stone bench under a dogwood tree. We sat down. Pauline set her coffee on the bench between us. She said: "Annette. Carl has been quietly worried about Howard for almost two years. He has been calling Howard every Friday evening for two and a half years to invite him fishing. Howard has been saying no every Friday for two and a half years." I said: "Pauline. I know. I have heard the phone." She said: "Annette. Carl has been telling me that he thinks something is wrong with Howard. He has not known how to bring it up. Men of their generation do not bring those things up." She paused. She said: "Annette. I want to tell you about Carl. Will you let me?" I said: "Yes, Pauline." Pauline told me about Carl for the next forty-five minutes. She told me Carl had been on the same cardiac trajectory four years ago that I had been watching Howard be on. His blood pressure had been creeping up for years. His doctor had been recommending a medication. He had been buying time. He had been avoiding things. She told me about Carl on a ladder in their backyard at sixty-five, three rungs up, stopping, coming down, not saying why. She told me about Carl not going up the lake with Howard on Saturday mornings. She told me, sitting on the bench behind the church hall, that Carl had been doing what Howard had been doing. She told me Carl had finally agreed to go on a low-dose blood pressure medication about two and a half years ago. She told me she had been the one who had read about the supplement at that point. She told me she had landed on a small company called Rosabella. She said: "Annette. Carl's doctor had been very clear with us. The medication was the primary thing. The medication was going to move the blood pressure number. The supplement was in the additive layer. The supplement supported the body's natural antioxidant balance, supported healthy circulation, supported healthy blood pressure levels already within the normal range, and supported the body's natural cellular energy. The active compound — the betalains, the deep red pigment in beetroot — had been studied for decades for cardiovascular wellness. Rosabella cold-pressed at low temperatures, which preserved the active compound. The capsules were a deep, dark crimson when you opened the bottle. That color was the pigment, intact." She said: "I brought the bottle to Carl's doctor before he started. His doctor said it was a sensible thing to add. Add it to what he was already doing. Don't change anything else. The supplement does not replace the medication. The supplement supports the layer around the medication." Carl had been on both for two and a half years. Pauline told me, sitting on the bench, that Carl had been back on the lake every Saturday morning for two years. She told me Carl had been on the ladder in their backyard again. She told me, more quietly, that Vincent had died on his couch yesterday at sixty-eight. Carl was sixty-nine and he had spent the morning helping their grandson set up a swing set in their backyard. She said: "Annette. I am not telling you the medication and the supplement are why Carl came back. I am telling you that Carl had been avoiding the things in his life that asked his body to work, and that after he went on both, he stopped avoiding them. There is something underneath the avoiding that I do not have a name for. The medication and the supplement and the conversation we had on our back porch three years ago all happened around the same time." She said: "I am one wife on a bench behind a church hall. I am one story." She gave me her phone number on a piece of paper she had in her pocketbook. She wrote the name of the supplement underneath the phone number. She said: "Annette. Have Howard talk to Dr. Pellegrini. Take the medication conversation seriously this time. Have the doctor bless the supplement around it. Then call me." We hugged on the bench. I drove home from the funeral that afternoon with the piece of paper in my purse. I sat in my driveway for twenty minutes before I went inside. I went inside. Howard was in his recliner. The news was on at low volume. I sat down on the couch across from him. I said: "Howie. I need to talk to you. Will you mute the news?" He muted the news. I told him about Pauline. About Carl. About the bench behind the church hall. I told him I had been watching the ladder for three years. I told him I had been looking at his notebook on the mornings when he was in the bathroom. I told him I had not been saying anything for two and a half years. I told him I was sorry. He listened to all of it. When I was done, he was quiet for a long time. Then he said: "Annette. I have not been telling you what happened on the third rung that first December." He told me. He said he had felt something in his chest on the third rung that morning. He had not been sure what it was. It had not been pain. It had been more like a pressure he had not been sure was the cold or his heart. He had been afraid it had been his heart. He had not gone up a ladder again because he had been afraid he would feel it again. He said: "Annette. I have not been telling you because I have not wanted you to worry. I have been telling myself the cuff numbers and the third rung were not connected. I have known they were. I have been afraid of them." He started crying in his recliner. I went over and sat on the arm of the recliner. I put my arms around him. He put his arms around my waist. We sat like that for a long time. I said: "Howie. Will you call Dr. Pellegrini on Monday? Will you have me come with you?" He said: "Annette. I will." We went to Dr. Pellegrini that Friday. Dr. Pellegrini has been Howard's doctor for thirteen years. He is a careful man. About our age. The kind of doctor who looks at his patient first and the chart second. Howard told him about the third rung. I had not heard Howard tell anyone about the third rung before. Dr. Pellegrini listened. He said: "Howard. Thank you for telling me. I am going to run the full workup today. I want to do a stress test before we do anything else. I want to make sure there is nothing structural we need to address before we have the medication conversation." He ran the workup that morning. He scheduled the stress test for the following Tuesday. The stress test came back fine. Howard's heart was structurally healthy. There was nothing on the standard tests that needed an intervention. Dr. Pellegrini called us into his office the Friday after the stress test. He said: "Howard. Your structural heart is fine. What you have been feeling on the ladder is consistent with the blood pressure pattern we have been watching for four years. The pressure number has been creeping up. The body knows. The body is asking you to take it seriously." He told us about the medication. He told us what it could do and what it could not do. He told us about the studies. He told us how he would monitor. He told us he wanted to start Howard that week. He told us he wanted to do a six-week check-in and a twelve-week check-in. I told him about Pauline at the funeral. I told him about Carl. I told him about the supplement. I asked him whether he would be comfortable with Howard adding it. Dr. Pellegrini said: "I have been hearing about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness for a few years from a handful of my patients. The research is decent. It is sensible. It is in the additive layer. It does not replace the medication. The medication is going to move the number. The supplement is going to support the layer around it. The two things are doing different jobs. I am comfortable with Howard adding it." He told us to start the medication first. He told us to add the supplement a couple of days later. Howard picked up the medication at the pharmacy on the way home. I ordered two bottles of Rosabella from the website that night. Two because I had been planning to start it myself too. The bottles arrived three days later. Howard started the medication on a Friday. We both started the Rosabella the following Monday. Two capsules each with a glass of water in the morning. He did not change anything else. I did not change anything else. I want to tell you what happened over the next twelve weeks. I am not going to make a claim about what caused what. I am going to tell you what happened in the order it happened. The first thing was the morning cuff. About a week and a half in, the morning number on the cuff came down by a few points. Howard wrote it in the notebook. He showed me the notebook at the breakfast table. He had not shown me the notebook in years. He said: "Annette. Look." I looked. The number was a few points lower than the average he had been seeing. He said: "I do not know if this is the medication settling in or if it is the supplement or if it is something else. I am going to keep watching." I said: "Howie. I am going to watch with you now." He kept watching. I watched with him. By the end of week four, the morning numbers had settled into a band a noticeable amount lower than they had been in over a year. I am not going to give you the specific numbers. The specific numbers are between Howard and Dr. Pellegrini. I will tell you the morning numbers came down to a place Howard had not seen on his cuff in a long time. He kept writing them in the notebook. We looked at the notebook together at the breakfast table every morning. About three weeks in, on a Friday evening, Carl called Howard. Carl had been calling every Friday for two and a half years. That Friday Howard picked up the phone. He said: "Carl. Yes. I will come fishing tomorrow." Carl was quiet on the phone for a moment. Then Carl said: "Howard. I will pick you up at five thirty." Carl picked Howard up at five thirty in the morning the next Saturday. I made Howard a thermos of coffee. He had his tackle box. He had the fishing rod he had not used in two and a half years. He hugged me at the front door. He said: "Annette. I am going fishing." I said: "Howie. Have a good morning." Carl's truck was in our driveway. Howard walked down to the truck. He got in. I watched the truck back out of the driveway. I went inside and made myself a second cup of coffee. I called Pauline at seven in the morning. She picked up on the first ring. She said: "Annette. Are they on the lake?" I said: "Pauline. They are." She started crying on the phone. I cried with her. Howard came home at noon. He had three bass on a stringer. He cleaned them in the driveway. He grilled them for our dinner that night. He sat at the kitchen table with me eating bass and corn on the cob and the green beans I had made. He said: "Annette. The lake had not changed. Carl had not changed." He paused. He said: "I had been the thing that had changed. I had been telling myself the lake had become too much. The lake had been the lake the whole time." He held my hand across the table. We did not say anything else about it. Around week eight, Howard went down to the basement. He went down to bring up the Christmas storage bins. I heard him on the stairs. I had not heard Howard on the basement stairs in two years. I went to the top of the stairs. He was three steps down. He stopped. He said: "Annette. Stay there. I am going to do this." He went down to the basement. I heard him moving things around for about ten minutes. He came back up with two of the storage bins. He set them at the top of the stairs. He went back down. He brought up two more. He brought up the strings of lights. He set everything in the living room. He sat down in his recliner. He was breathing a little heavier than he would have been five years ago. But not as heavy as he had been telling himself for three years he would be. He said: "Annette. The basement is just a basement." I said: "Howie. I know." The first Saturday in December was the structural payoff of the year. Howard had been on the medication and the supplement for ten weeks. He had been on the lake five Saturdays out of the seven Saturdays since he had started. He had been down to the basement three more times after the first time. He had been bringing up his own bins. The morning numbers on the cuff had been in a band that had made Dr. Pellegrini smile at the six-week check-in. The first Saturday in December came. Howard came down to breakfast at seven thirty. He sat down at the kitchen counter and took his blood pressure reading. He wrote the number in the notebook. He said: "Annette. I am going out to the garage." He went out to the garage. He came back about ten minutes later carrying the eight-foot ladder. I had not seen Howard carry a ladder out of the garage in three years. He set the ladder up next to the front porch. I came out the front door with two cups of coffee. He took one of the coffees. He said: "Annette. I want to be honest with you about something. I am going to do the porch trim today. I am going to do the dogwood tree. I am not going to do the roofline. The roofline needs the twelve-foot extension and the twelve-foot extension is too much ladder for me at sixty-seven. Justin is going to come over at noon to do the roofline. He is going to be paid this year. He is no longer doing me a favor." He paused. He said: "Annette. I am not the man on the ladder I was at fifty. I am the man on the ladder I want to be at sixty-seven. There is a difference. I am at peace with the difference." I said: "Howie. So am I." He climbed the eight-foot ladder. He went up to the second-to-top rung. He did the porch trim. He came down. He moved the ladder over to the dogwood tree. He went up the ladder. He did the dogwood. He came down at noon. He had been on the ladder for two and a half hours. He was tired but he was not winded. He was not standing still on the third rung. He had been on the eight-foot ladder doing what an electrician of sixty-seven who has had a quiet conversation with his body could honestly do. Justin came over at noon. Howard paid him sixty dollars to do the roofline. Justin did the roofline in about an hour. Howard stayed in the front yard with me. He stood next to me with his coffee cup and watched Justin work. He said: "Annette. He is a good kid. I am glad his father raised him the way he did." I said: "Howie. I am glad too." At sunset, the lights went on. Howard had the switch in his hand on the porch. He flipped it on. The roofline lit up. The porch trim lit up. The dogwood tree lit up. Howard stood on the front porch with the switch in his hand and looked at the house for a long moment. He said: "Annette. The house looks the way it has looked for thirty-five years." I said: "Howie. It does." I hugged him on the front porch. He held me for a long time. Howard went back to Dr. Pellegrini at the twelve-week mark. Dr. Pellegrini ran the bloodwork. Took the pressure. Listened to Howard describe the last twelve weeks. He sat back in his chair. He said: "Howard. The cholesterol is fine. The pressure is in a much better place than it was at the start. The medication is doing what we wanted it to do. The fact that you are on the lake and on the ladder and on the basement stairs is supporting everything around the medication. Keep doing all of it. Come back at six months." Howard told him about the first Saturday in December. He told him about the eight-foot ladder. He told him about Justin doing the roofline. He told him about being at peace with the difference between the man on the ladder at fifty and the man on the ladder at sixty-seven. Dr. Pellegrini smiled. He said: "Howard. That is exactly the kind of conversation I want you having with your body. Keep having it." I want to be careful here. I am not a doctor. I am not in healthcare. I am one sixty-three-year-old retired elementary school music teacher who watched her husband walk past a ladder in his own garage for three years and who finally sat down on a stone bench behind a church hall with a woman she had never met at a funeral. I do not know for certain what fraction of what changed was the medication, what fraction was the supplement, what fraction was Howard finally telling me about the third rung. I know what we added. I know what Howard stopped pretending about. I know what the cuff has shown. I know what my husband climbed in December. I also know we are sixty-three and sixty-seven and there will come a day when no medication and no supplement and no honest conversation will hold back the slow turning of the years. There will come a day when Howard will not be on the ladder. There will come a day when neither of us will be. I am at peace with that. I am not pretending otherwise. I also know — and I want to say this very clearly — that the medication Dr. Pellegrini prescribed is doing the work the medication was supposed to do at the blood pressure level. The supplement is supporting the layer around the medication. They are different things. Neither one of them would have done what they have done together if Howard had not finally told me about the third rung. What I am telling you is what we did. What I noticed. What our doctor said about it. That is all. If you are a wife who has been watching her husband walk past a ladder, or a tool, or a fishing rod, or a basement stairwell, or a set of basketball hoops in the driveway for years, and his blood pressure has been creeping up, and his doctor has been wanting to have a medication conversation, and you have not been saying anything, here is what I would say. Tell him you have been watching. Take him to his doctor. Have the medication conversation. Have it honestly. Do not run from it. If his doctor recommends a medication, let him take the medication. Then, if his doctor agrees it is a sensible thing to add, add the supplement in the additive layer. Around the medication. Not instead of it. Do not subtract anything. Do not change anything else. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. Bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first few weeks. For Howard, the first thing I noticed was the morning number on the cuff coming down a few points around the start of week two. That is the whole story. P.S. I ran into a woman from my old school last month at the grocery store. Her name is Maureen. She had been the fourth-grade teacher at the school where I taught music for the last fifteen years of my career. She had retired the year after I did. She was at the produce. She said: "Annette. You look different. What have you been doing?" I told her. I told her about Pauline at the funeral. I told her about Howard on the ladder. She listened. She said: "Annette. My husband has been on a blood pressure medication for six years. He has been quietly avoiding the boat. We have a boat. We have had a boat for thirty years. He had not been on it in two summers." She asked me if she could call Pauline's number to ask her about the supplement. I told her to call her own doctor first. I told her to ask her doctor whether adding it would be sensible. She called her doctor that Friday. Her doctor said it was a sensible thing to add to her husband's medication. He started the next Monday. She called me last weekend. She said: "Annette. He went out on the boat with our grandson on Saturday. He had not been on the boat in two summers. He drove it himself." I said: "Maureen. I am glad." That is how this works. A woman at a funeral sits down on a stone bench with you and tells you about her husband. You go home and you finally talk to your husband about a third rung he has been carrying alone for three years. You both go to the doctor. He goes on the medication. He adds the supplement. Three months later he is on the eight-foot ladder. The next year another wife asks you what you have been doing. She calls her own doctor. Her husband adds it. He goes out on the boat with their grandson. You sit at your kitchen table and you write the story down for the next wife. P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you to do if you are thinking about trying the supplement. Check with the doctor or pharmacist first. That is the most important step. Especially if he is already on a blood pressure medication or about to start one. Tell the doctor everything. Then take two capsules with a glass of water in the morning. Do not change anything else. Just add this. The supplement does not replace any medication a doctor has prescribed. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. Some men notice something within the first few weeks — a little more willingness to go up the third rung of a ladder, a little more steadiness through the day, a little more honesty about a third rung he has been telling himself was nothing. Others take longer. Be patient with his body. P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it helps. P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation. They harvest and bottle on their own schedule. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case. I started taking it myself the same Monday Howard did. I am sixty-three. I had been carrying the third rung for three years too. I had been watching the ladder for three years and pretending I had not been. The third rung has been quieter in my own head since the bench behind the church hall. I do not know if that is the supplement. I do not know if it is the conversation Howard and I had in the living room with the news on mute. I do not know if it is the lights coming on the first Saturday in December. I know all three of those things happened. The eight-foot ladder is back on the hooks in the garage where Howard had hung it on the wall fifteen years ago. I walk past it sometimes when I am taking out the recycling. I do not feel anything when I walk past it now. That is what I want to tell you about. The supplement is one thing. The medication is another thing. A husband who walks out to the garage on the first Saturday in December and carries his own ladder out to the front porch is a third thing. It is the thing I had been afraid I had been losing. It is the thing that has come back. https://track.tryrosabella.com/cdc16426-3e48-40a7-9fad-21098084f6cf Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.