Choices

Art is sleeping now. Yesterday for the first time, we had some alone time in our house. Art told me in the beginning of this journey he had a moment when he chose which way to go. “I remember. It wasn’t a voice, but it was just like my brain said ‘Come on. Go this way. Go this way. It’s easier.” The easier way was death. I watched him as he told me, his voice getting stronger, the color in his face deepening and his lips formed the line he gets when he’s made a decision. He said the his brain “No, I want to go the other way.”

He has told me he will not die before. “I will not leave you,” is what he said. But many times it sounded as if I was his little lady and he was shielding me from a truth I couldn’t handle. I grasped at it anyway, believing it to make it through another minute. But yesterday was different. The kids weren’t around. The statement didn’t come at night or in the panic rush between dinner and bedtime, or after tears. It wasn’t on one of our long, quiet and emotionally frightening drives back from the treatment center. We had already walked through the awkward re-acquaintance period -- how he’s feeling, the nuts and bolts of our days -- and were enjoying, our time alone, together. I asked him then, out of curiosity, not fear, how he knew he would survive this.

People think that a “good” couple knows everything about each other. A soul mated pair anticipates when and what the other will need. This disease punches more wholes in that idea than buck shot. I have watched him close in on himself and not known what to do. I have held him while he has cried and felt the powerless in trying to stop the tears. I don’t know a thing about what he is going through, not a thing. But I do know something that helps me continue this journey with him. Me. I am enough for him. I am enough and really, I guess that’s all that counts. It's all beautiful righ now.

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