The Cabbage Patch Gurl

It wasn’t a surprise to see her sitting by his bed all day today, even though he wasn’t awake.  Fast asleep with a tube in his mouth and IV lines going into every vein they could find.  She didn’t get up even once, and it was only a while after walking away that it really struck me why.

She wanted to hear him breathe.  And breathe again.  And then again.  Because somehow she knew that soon his doctor would come to her and explain that now even if he made it through the next few days, after that it wasn’t about years anymore, it was more on the scale of weeks, and in the tiny chance that things went well, maybe a few months.  That his cancer was suddenly growing back and winning against us and we couldn’t try our miracle drug anymore because that might’ve been what made him this sick in the first place.

The son that you raised and played with and laughed with and fed and clothed and hugged and kissed and dropped off to school and for twenty-two years you dreamt dreams of his bright future…. and now his breaths are so limited that you’re listening closely to each one because you never want to forget the sound of him breathing.  You don’t want to hear anyone talk, you don’t want sympathy, you don’t care about food or sleep, you just want to be with him and listen to him breathe because each breath counts right now as the sand runs through the hour glass and his numbers keep flashing on a dark computer screen.

Don’t die.  Please don’t die, don’t you see, you’re only twenty-two and you’re such a nice person and you’re supposed to be driving around in the new car that your mom bought you and playing with your four dogs and going to college and falling in love and deciding what you want to be in life.  Don’t die because you’re the only person your mom has in her life, and what is she going to do once you’re gone – where is she going to start again, how is she going to pick up the pieces of her life when you’re all she’s cared about for the past twenty two years? 

Don’t die because just two days ago you were sitting on the couch in your hospital room, gingerly sipping on orange juice as though it was a martini, laughing heartily at the lame jokes your doctor was cracking – and that made us so hopeful, we thought you’d be ok now and that we’d won the battle against a rare cancer that only five people had been treated for in the history of the world, and that it was just a matter of days before you regained your strength and then you’d be going back home with your mom.

You’re a life – a beautiful life that just started and was only supposed to keep getting better with each day. If only you knew how much definition you bring to the word life – indeed, you are life.  

Then why are you dying? 

Don’t die.  Please don’t die.