My Life, My Essence, My Reason For Living

I watch you sleeping form, your pale face framed by your black hair, against the bleached white pillow.

I can feel my heart ache as I watch you, so frail, so delicate. I don’t like seeing you like this, but I guess it is better than not seeing you at all.

I dread that day. That day that I will no longer be able to look into your smiling eyes. The day that I will no longer be able to hold you in my arms, or be held in yours.

I don’t want you to leave, I don’t know if I will be able to go on without you.

I love you so much. I want you to know that. I wish so much for you to be able to share my, now unbearably long looking, life.

Why do you have to be taken from me? Why did God decide that you are too good for this world?

Resting my head in my hands, I lean my arms on the edge of your hospital bed.

You’re so sick looking. Your eyes no longer alive as they used to be. You no longer have that childish energy radiating from your skin. Even that is paler than usual.

You sleep a lot lately, but not in our bed. I don’t like you being here, away from everything. That is familiar to you. I wanted to take you home, to get someone to help me look after you. But the doctor’s wouldn’t let me take you home, they said that it was better for you to stay here. That going home, away from the hospital wouldn’t help you at all.

Help you what? Help you suffer for longer? Help you to become scared while you were in unfamiliar surrounding? I didn’t like it. I never liked the thought of you being so far away from me.

Why did this have to happen? This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to you. Not to some one I knew.

This is the sort of thing that happens to other people, and then you feel sorry for their family, and loved ones, but grateful at the same time, because you think you are safe from this.

I jump slightly as your hand brushes mine, and looked up to find your blue eyes now open, a weak smile creasing your lips.

I lean closer to you, taking up your hand in both of mine, glad that I was here when you woke, allowing a soft smile to appear through my worry.

“Hey baby. How do you feel?” I whispered the words, rising from my seat, to perch on the edge of your bed. Freeing one of my hands from yours, I brush the hair out of your eyes, my hand resting on the side of your face. Leaning in, I press a kiss to your lips, triggering the small reaction of your lips moving under mine.

As I draw out of the kiss, I focus again on you eyes. The blueness filled with sadness and longing. The longing to live, the longing to be well.

Maybe you are also longing for the same thing that I am, for time just with you, time away from all of this whiteness, at home. Our home.

You nod carefully, as though it hurts to do so. “I feel alright.” Your response is as whispered as my question.

I know that you are being brave, being strong, that you are in constant pain.

“Is there anything you want?” I ask, tracing my thumb along your cheekbone, causing you to lean into my touch.

You close your eyes, your pale cheeks reddening at what ever you are about to say. Finally you reply in a small voice, looking back up at me. “A shower?”

I smile, causing your cheeks to flush even more, as if it was embarrassing to ask for a shower. “I’ll go ask one of the nurses.” I stand up, feeling your hand tightening on mine, your eyes growing wide.

“I, I, I wanted you to, um…” You trail off, cheeks now a dark shade, eyes dropping.

I laugh, and lean to press another kiss on your lips. “Don’t worry, I’m just going to let them know, and get some wheels for you.” I kissed you again, before I withdrew from the room. I asked the first nurse I saw, who I recognized as the young woman, who had been in your room before, if I would be able to take you, my boyfriend, to the showers.

Not that I used those words. I just asked if you would be able to have a shower.

She nodded, telling me that she would go get a wheel chair, and meet me back in the room.

I made my way back to your room, but stopped at the door, looking in through the window, watching you, my fractured angel, laying in the white bed, eyes closed in sleep.

You look so sick. You had for a while, even before you had told me about the cancer. But I had been to blind that I had never noticed it. I’d never noticed how tired you were all the time. How frail you had become.

There had always been next to nothing of you, my angel, just a tall, delicate frame, covered in pale skin.

Why was this happening to you? To us?

You look, for once, so peaceful, that I didn’t want to wake you.

So I waited outside the door until the nurse came back with the wheel chair.

She left me with it, saying that if I needed anything, any help at all, just to call her, or one of the other nurses.

I quietly opened the door, and wheeled the wheel chair over to your bed. I knew that I hadn’t been quiet enough, when your eyes fluttered open, as I stopped at your side.

Smiling, I moved between the bed and the chair, touching your face gently, before leaning into kiss you.

“Are you ready, baby?” I whisper, standing back up straight.

You nod slowly, lifting your arms up to me, resembling a little child, as you asked to be picked up.

Slowly, and carefully I move, first in folding back the sheets that covered you, and then in sliding one arm under your knees, and the other around your waist.

Feeling your own arms wrap tightly around my neck, I lifted your almost weightless form, from the bed, and turned to set you down again in the wheel chair.

It was a silent journey to the showers. A silence that continued to consume us, as we entered the shower cubical. That hung thick in the air, as I turned on the shower, getting the water to the temperature that you most preferred, before letting it run, as I turned my attention back to you.

I didn’t say anything as I lifted you again, untying the ugly hospital robe that you wore, removing it from your pale skin.

I couldn’t help but take a moment to look at you, to take in your beauty. Even in sickness you are beautiful. You always will be. Your eternal youth, and beauty captured in all the memories of you, in all the photographs.

I tested the water once again, to make sure that it was still all right, before I placed you down on the plastic chair that sat under the stream of water.

My eyes settled on your body again, freezing me in what I was doing. I couldn’t help but watch you for a while longer, watching the water streaming over your body, making rivers across your skin, before I joined you in the, boarder lining hot, water.

I stood at your side, washing your black hair for you, as the water freckled my now bare skin.

As I stepped back, allowing your hair to rinse, I was surprised as you tried to stand, your legs bracing under you, forcing yourself onto your feet.

I couldn’t move as you turned to me, gently pushing the chair out of the way, the plastic legs scraping across the tiled floor, the noise sending shivers up my spine.

You stepped closer to me, your blue eyes slightly bloodshot, glazed over with tears, which were lost in the water that splattered your face. I opened my arms to you, wrapping them around you tightly as you met me.

I held your head with one hand, your shoulders stooping to meet my height.

“Don’t let me go, David, don’t ever leave me.” You pleaded, your voice choked with the sobs that I could tell were threatening to escape.

I held you tighter, rubbing one hand up and down your back, feeling the water being pushed out of my way, running across my fingers. “I’ll never leave you Cameron, nothing could make me leave your side.”

Your legs gave slowly beneath you, and we both sank to the floor, the water still pouring over both our bodies.

I didn’t let go of you, I didn’t even allow my tight grip on you to loosen slightly. I didn’t want to let you go. I didn’t want you to disappear.

I don’t want you to leave me. I want you to be with me always and always. I want you to know that. I want you to know that no matter what, I will always love you. I will love you forever and ever. You will be the only one in my life.

You are my life, my essence. The thing that keeps me going. I don’t know how I will go on with out you. It will be a struggle. But I will try. I will try for you my love. For you, in memory of you, I will live. I will go on. I will grow old. I will not allow your memory to disappear so easily.

We will all live for you. We will all live with the memory of you, in the memory of you.

You are what has kept me going all these years. You are the one who held me through all my hard times. You were the one who held me and helped me through all my low points in life. The one who put up with me all these years.

And now you are what is going to keep me going over the next part of my life. It will be the toughest part of my life, because you will not be here, in person, to help me through.

But I will try to keep going all the same.

For you are my life, my essence, and you are my reason for living.

The End.