They say that when you decide to write something you should write about what you know. Well I can’t claim to be an expert of anything particularly except maybe just being ordinary. Ive traveled some, I’ve had some college, worked a lot. I have some faith but no fear of asking why or how come.

Mostly I’ve just spent most of my life being a husband and navigating all the pitfalls and victories of just being that. When i was young i had massive aspirations to be this or that. But my wife was always like but no our first job our first duty was to be man and wife, to be friend’s forever before all else.

I’ll be honest a lot of times it felt like a sea anchor on my dreams. But she never stood in the way of those dreams. But she also didn’t subsidize those either. It wasn’t always easy but that sea anchor always held us together when storms hit. And they did hit.

We had been setting fitfully in the hospital room that had been her cell these last eight days. The news from the successful procedure this afternoon to close up the ulcer in her stomach was good, although not surprisingly news. Francie had been restless and angry all evening. She was tired so very tired. She couldn’t get comfortable. Her arms and legs were in a constant state of motion. Shifting and flopping around trying to find some comfortable resting place. Some solace from the constant pain and unrest.

I would be leaving in forty minutes for my job on the third shift. It was 9:30 on a Tuesday evening. She wasn’t talkative and i was just surfing some news sites whiling away the time. I’d been here before. She felt like shit, I knew she felt like shit, and we both knew there was nothing to be done to change that. So we endured it together.

At least that is what I tell myself now. She didn’t want to talk and being there was enough while i could. That there was no reassuring words I could say to mollify or soothe the pain or uncertainty away. Because in reality there wasn’t. We had both been here so many times with other ancillary medical issues. All with no explainable reason as to why such seemingly minor issues are such an indomitable fact of her life.

A lifetime of monitoring for her blood sugars, what she ate, how active she had been. She was a walking chemistry experiment that never functioned properly. Needed constant attention, and graded her for every poor decision by passing out or being racked with grinding pain.
How do you communicate that kind of oppression to someone who never gives a thought to what they eat or do until their in there mid fifties and life is catching up to them. How do you defend your failures to “control” your diabetes when you smooth muscles that help you digest food have died and atrophied 20 years ago. “Oh you haven’t had a bowl movement in seven days. Well i just don’t know what to way to say to that”.
Or what do you mean you crashed a family reunion at the park you didn’t know because your BG was low and all you knew was you needed to eat.

How do you be a husband to that? Ive read of stories of courage and faith where families have been tested with cancer or some other horrible medical issue. How they faced it together, they persevered. Or death took the one they love.
What manual what scripture instructs you to the reality that this is going to be the entirety of your life together?

Where asking how was your day was always a loaded question, Oh my BG was 600 when i got up and i evidently over corrected and it went into the 40’s. So I mindlessly ate all of last nights leftovers and now it’s back in the 400’s and I’m going to bed.
By the way could you massage my stomach and large intestine before i lay down. I haven’t had a bowel movement in 6 days and i fell like Im full of clay. Would you look at these sores and see if they’re worse today.

You share things in a marriage, if it’s truly a marriage. The joy’s and the failings alike.
You share the intimacy that finally teaches you after 15 years of being married what it means to be of one flesh.

Intimacy was never intended to just be about making love, holding hands, and receiving knowing looks. Being intimate with someone means knowing where they hurt or what makes them sad. Why they do the illogical things they do . How long have they had those sores on their back. And then cleaning and bandaging them in the evening before bed. Their sores become your sores. Their beauty and their ugly becomes yours.

You fight with waves of guilt and frustration. Am i being attentive enough, or Im tired of being a burden. Then she will say i really do understand this is just as hard for you as it is me, different, but still hard on you.

We set in silence being who we were when we were young, if nothing else in our minds we remember. We remember when our bodies would intertwine together. Entangled arms and legs, sweaty, breath returning to normal. And its enough then in that moment to know those times of abandon, when the whole world had disappeared. When we were the only two people alive in the world and we were still here, still together.

It is enough to know we gave ourselves fully to risking to love with recklessness.
It is enough to know we gave all of ourselves to each other.
And we set here in fitful silence knowing that it had indeed been enough. We had met the mark, we got to know the mystery of two becoming one.

She’s thrashing now and struggling for breath. We buzz the nurse and she leaves to arrange another breathing treatment. The breaths are harder now almost guppy breathing. She frantically forces herself up to try and catch a breath.
It doesn’t work – and the blankets are thrown off. She’s racing to get out of bed desperately trying to get out of bed in the hopes that standing will alleviate whatever is between her and a breath of oxygen. I’ve flung the tray and chair out of the way and she’s standing now. I wrap my arms around her only enough to stabilize and catch her if she falls. Not wanting to be the thing that makes it harder to breathe. Wanting to be there if she falls.

Her body tense up and goes ridged like she was hit with a stun gun. Then just as abruptly she goes limp and is falling back to the bed. She just escaped her body and i know that the memories in her mind are even then fading as she slip out of her flesh.
Im laying her down like a child who fell asleep from a long long car ride. Hit the buzzer for the nurses station, “Need help now”.
Then i finally look into her eyes, dull and fixed.

First there is two…… she’s non responsive….. now there’s an RN…. A few quick observation’s… she straddle’s her in the bed telling one to get a back board and the other to call a code….. it’s been 3 minutes maybe just 1 who knows. Half the hospital is in the room now on this beautiful June evening. Im trapped now, everyone now is solely focused on what they can do to help. It’s not a room of spectators, it’s a room full of participant’s in this fight.
Im pinned now, literally in the window well by a sea of uniforms. Im instantly numb and ill at ease with being there then. They’re working feverishly – violently to kick start her body back to life.
Im mad now – offended at how they are treating her now, without her permission. But I know they are doing the dirty work they are trained to do. Impersonally manipulating the body to try and yank life back into it. Shit she is going to be so pissed because of the pain those chest compressions are going to leave.

Finally a young nurse snakes her way through the sea of uniforms and leads me out of what has become an incomprehensible chaos that surrounded me. Blindly following her to a waiting room. Cool and dark and quiet as a tomb. I set in the dark, in the shadows. Thankful for the stillness that blankets me. It all comes to me at once. Francie’s gone and I’m alone now in this world.

I set in the silence in the cool dark room and wait for a doctor to come and tell me what i already know.