LOVE......

I saw the above clip this morning and I remembered my last week with my dear wife …I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

She has been in pain for about two days, and that evening we called a Doctor to come and have a look at her condition. We were told that she needed to be admitted to the nearby St Vincent immediately. An ambulance was called and we had her admitted.

Early the next morning, when I was with her, the Doctors came around…a few of them…and that was when I was told…that my wife will not survive for more than a few days. The next 24 hours were crucial and all that they, and I should do, was to make her as comfortable as possible.

I tried to process what the Doctors were telling even as they were telling it to me. Everything within me understood what was being told to me. Everything within me told me she is not going to leave me to live the rest of my life alone. I was not going to allow that to happen. I kept that knowledge within me. Did not share it with anyone - not even my son…but did call my daughter in Canada and told her that her mother was ill…very ill.

Two days later, as her condition had deteriorated, I was asked if I wanted to move my wife downstairs to the Hospice unit as they would be able to better take care of her …and the Doctor said that they will try to get us a room to ourselves. I said I would prefer for her to be where she was because, for me, admitting her to the Hospice Unit was too final a thing to do. I still could not, and will not accept, that I was going to lose her.

In the last week of her life, every day, I would tell her to get well because I wanted to take her home. And every day, my son, me, and friends who were with us till the end, were with her tending to her every need.

There were moments of clarity and consciousness when we thought that she was getting better. When we thought that she knew we were there with her, and for her…but only moments of clarity lasting for not more than a minute or two at most.

The end came early one morning. I was sleeping in a chair bedside her when I was awakened, reached out to touch her face and knew that life has left her. It seems like it was just a few minutes ago that it all happened. Sad to have her leave me, but we had a good life together. No regrets, only a heavy, intense sadness that she was no longer around to share that life with me.