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Thank you to Diana and Mary for the beta. With love and hugs to Audrey.

Waiting

I can hear his heartbeat slowing down. The continual beeping of the machine is getting slower and slower. His breaths are shallower, longer apart and very raspy. I overheard the nurse say he didn't have long left when she gave him that last morphine shot. Probably his last morphine shot. I wish there was a way that I could have taken his pain away like I did in the old days. If only I could have hugged him enough, touched him enough, kissed him enough, maybe then the cancer wouldn't be eating away at his insides.

My strong, sweet, sensitive, loving man is dying. It came fast, surprising both of us when the final diagnoses came. We thought for sure we had beaten the odds, gotten a lucky break, but instead, it was time to fold the hand we'd been dealt.

Never once since we'd found each other had we promised forever; we simply knew it wasn't possible, we weren't immortals, we didn't have the option to live or die, we simply understood that we'd love each other until we died. Neither one of us believed in life after death, although, I did consider reincarnation a logical next step, but I knew he was too practical to believe in that.

While I kept looking for an answer, a cure, any kind of help from any corner of the globe, he made plans. He planned the cremation, the service, the burial. He chose a hymn from his childhood Sundays in church, humming a bit of it for me one afternoon. I pretended not to notice what he was doing, he tried every whisper of hope I brought to his bedside.

The man I have loved for more than half my life is dying. The man who taught me what commitment meant. What bravery and courage meant when standing face to face with fear. The man who held my hand when my mother died, and caught the pieces as I fell apart afterwards. We both grieved her loss, so much the mother she had been to both of us, even though unconventional.

Having never known my father, and faced with being an orphan, he took me into his arms and sheltered me with his warmth and strength until I could stand again. I heard it said somewhere that you're never truly an adult until both of your parents are dead. And then you have no choice except to be the adult. Unless you have someone by your side, someone who can deal with the nitpicky details and the endless sympathy cards and the stream of people offering their support and kindness when all you want to do is scream at the world about the unfairness of it all.

And now my strength is fading; he is dying.

When it came his turn to face the grief of loss, he stood stoic at the graveside of his father, oblivious to the throng of people around us. He stood there while the coffin was lowered into the ground, never once hearing the funeral director ask him to leave. And I stood watch, made sure nothing touched him, nothing interrupted his grief, which no one, except me, could see. I had stood in that same spot not two years before, and I remembered.

It took a while, a week, maybe more, before he shattered. It was utter and complete desolation that swept through me as I watched him fall apart. It was huge; a total shattering of the man I loved. We held each other and cried as the enormity of our situation fell on us. We were orphans of the world, alone and abandoned. Except we had each other.

And now, I will be well and truly alone. One person again. I will carry a part of him inside me until I die. I will carry it next to the memories of my mother, my Naomi, his father, the dog I had when I was ten, the stray cat I brought in to live with me on my first day of college. I will carry it next to the things I never had, but secretly wanted, my doctorate, a child, a brother or sister, someone to remember me, celebrate my life. My coming and going.

But I will remember every moment with Jim. Every smile. Every laugh. Every hug. I will not forget. I can't. It's my burden to carry now.

I take his cold hand in mine, I can no longer feel the pulse in his wrist, but the machine still beeps out a faint rhythm. He takes another shallow, gaspy breath. And as I wait for the next breath, the heart monitor goes silent.

He is gone.

No final words, no last goodbye. Just silence.

I am alone. He is gone. Jim is gone.

And now, I wait.

End Waiting by Lisa Duncans Twin: wmlisa@comcast.net

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