Loving Someone with Cancer

Picture this.

You're married.

Yeah, I said it, MARRIED.

But you're unhappy.

You're unsure about this "love"...

You're unsure about tomorrow...

You think you love them...

Until you meet the real one.

But what's so bittersweet is that...

The one?... He has terminal cancer.

Stage 3A lung cancer, to be exact.

The picture featured above represents "the last good day" we had.

You look at that picture and see two people kissing.

I look at this picture, and I feel all the love my heart, mind, body, and soul has to offer in a moment that would have never been captured if he hadn't turned my camera on and caught it.

And he says the same.

Such a raw picture.

A real kiss. A real love. A real moment.

While I was painting, he started poking my sides, and I got him with my paint brush.

The next thing I knew, we were both covered in paint.

We ran after each other with paint covered fingers, aiming for anything NOT slathered in white.

It was all laughs, hugs, and smiles.

And it was a good day.

What do the days consist of now?

Climbing 3 flights of stairs and collapsing.

Anxiety and panic attacks that lead to the inability to talk due to weakend lungs and throat muscles.

Staying up until 4 am when he says he feels dizzy or "not right," just to make sure his lungs are still breathing, and his heart is still beating in the morning.

It's been a steady downhill slope, and it's so hard to try to go up, knowing that his condition is rapidly declining.

But I refuse to let him shut himself in.

I refuse to let him die without amazing memories of me.

I refuse to let him go without having once-in-a-lifetime memories that we make together.

We don't have good days anymore.

We have good moments.

One day, we cut open glow sticks and covered our apartment in splatters of glowing goo.

It looked like a galaxy that had carried many stories within it.

On the ceiling, there was a space ship traveling at the speed of light, pushing the stars in front, and leaving nothing behind it.

The blinds had a pattern that looked like a giant ship closing in on, and surveying, a small neon planet, just waiting to overthrow and take it over.

The hallway shone the brightest with the most goo splattered everywhere, and it felt like we were floating through space.

We danced in our living room that night surrounded by nothing but unplanned splatters made to look like space ships, stars, and planets with rings.

That dance didn't last long.

He couldn't breathe after all that fun.

After all that running around the apartment creating the beautifully breathtaking artwork we never thought would come of cutting open glow sticks, he was unable to force his muscles to stand, to even move, any longer.

The time between the 2 events?

About 2 weeks.

And that fact just breaks my heart.

A couple weeks later, he had a check up to see how everything was progressing, and the news made my heart come up through my throat and drop to the floor.

He had 2–3 weeks left to live.

I had to stay strong and stoic for him, but I have never fought so hard to hold back tears in my life.

And when he finally kissed me after exposing that heart shattering information, the flood gates crumbled to my feet.

We both cried that night.

All I could do was lay awake, and hold his head close to my chest.

I know he could hear my heart breaking as he held me in the dark and just listened to my heartbeat until we both eventually fell asleep.

I was so afraid to wake up that next morning.

Afraid that the doctors had misjudged his timeline.

Afraid that I would roll over and feel a cold body instead of a warm one.

Afraid that I had just lost one of the best people to ever come into my life.

Every single morning is like that now.

I feel my heart sink as soon as I open my eyes, and roll over to touch his skin and check for warmth.

The one thing that makes my heart tense and feels as if it's being squeezed is the fact that he might pass without ever knowing how much I love him.

Without ever knowing how much I care for and about him.

Without ever knowing that I would do anything to trade places with him because he deserves it.

He deserves a good life.

With how much he has gone through in his 22 years on this spinning planet that we call Earth...

He deserves the chance to make a better life.

And it kills me every single day, knowing that he won't be able to.