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It Felt Like No Time to Think
*Trauma alert. Body parts and pain in this one.*
Anyone loving another person over the long haul — parent, child, spouse — feels that shiver of dread now and then: What if they die? What will it be like WHEN they die?
The moment I bound my life to Dave’s, common sense suggested I’d become a widow at some point. He just had too many things wrong with his body that couldn’t be repaired. In today’s “here’s how we fix it” medical world, that’s unusual. But I benefited from the calm and honest approach of the doctors at the nearest major medical center, once we were officially married and I could be in the examining rooms with Dave and hearing results: “We know that once a person reaches this size, they are not likely to ever lose much of the weight,” was one helpful example. It let me take a further step in accepting Dave for exactly who he was. My soulmate.
As the breakdown of normal life accelerated, as Dave lost the ability to walk in a store, then to walk to the car, then to walk across a room without risk of falling, I felt afraid: Would I be able to do what each situation called for? Walking next to my beloved with his hand clutching my shoulder for balance was one thing; dealing with bathroom emergencies would be entirely another. I was the mom who had trouble not throwing up when she cleaned up her kid’s vomit. After all these years of…
