The Balance of Nature

I love my husband. Until the very end I hoped for a miracle. But as much as I had hope and faith, I also believed in the balance of nature. So although I was praying to God for a last minute change of heart, I sort of gave up the fight the moment I learnt about the patient in the room next to ours.

Our medical oncologist called me on the night of June 17th to tell me that she thinks my husband will pass in the next 24-48 hours. I was holding out hope that with some kind twist of fate the cancer would suddenly disappear just like in the movies. I politely asked the doctor in charge for a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) form before Cezar's vitals dropped further.

I finished signing the form and just stood at the nurse's station for a while. I was lost. Across me the door opened and I saw for the first time the only confirmation I needed about my husband's destiny.

The room was filled with pink balloons and there in a bassinet was a newborn child, sleeping, her mother looking at her smiling while everyone else yapped away holding their paper plates and styro cups. There, in between our rooms, nature maintained equilibrium in this shitty thing we call life. It was a breathtaking sight to behold, and it made me cry for obvious reasons.

Cezar's time was up. I have never been more sure.

I had all the monitors in the room, all the medical personnel to give me updates, but I only needed an infant to tell me that whoever was up there in heaven had made up its mind.

I wanted to know who the child was. Was there any chance she was my husband reborn? Does she know that for her to have earned a license to live, my husband had his license revoked? Questions after questions, my mind bled with the craziness of all that I was witnessing. What a cruel way to be left behind. What a way to be reminded that I am now a childless widow. I could've obsessed over this child but decided to let it go. After all, if we were meant to meet, life will find a way to have our paths cross.

Cezar died the next day, he didn't even make it 'til noon. I should've gotten mad at our onco. I should've asked her why  she said he would pass in 24-48 hours when he died only some 12 hours after we talked on the phone. I was angry to the point of irrational. But  I was never hysterical. Cezar hated it when I went crazy.

So there I was contemplating what to do with a life that I had planned with someone who was now gone.  All I could think of was how this life sucks. I hate it. I don't want any part of it. If there is a God, well I hate him too. The first night I slept alone, I prayed hard to never wake up the next day. I did wake up much to my dismay, but with a newfound purpose which was to finish my late husband's wishes. I prayed that after I've accomplished all that he wasn't able to, it would be my turn to join him in heaven.

I have so much to do and not a lot of heart to do them but I'm trying. I'm taking very small steps. Every step feels like stepping on broken shards of glass. Then I think, at least broken glass can heal-it will scar, but it will fade over time. But my broken heart is not a wound. I can wait for an eternity but it will never, ever heal. Like everything else about my life now, all I can do is live with it.

I ugly cry thinking about what I'm supposed to do with my future. Very few people understand that I can fully function and still be grieving everyday. I have never been in such a confusing place. I can laugh out loud while dying inside. It's so hard to live with the guilt of living, smiling, and laughing without the person I love the most. Always, at the end of the day, I wish I could sleep beside him and feel him stroke my hair. I miss his scent. I miss how I had a person I could call mine. Now it's just me and a bootload of pillows. I still have our cats, but nothing will ever be the same again without him.

I wish I could give mother nature the middle finger, just so I can get even. Out of all the lowlives in this wicked world, why take my husband? But in the middle of me writing this, I feel like Cezar whispered something to me.

I suddenly thought about how sometimes nature's balance doesn't have to happen in completely opposite ends. A life that ends doesn't necessarily have to give life to a new person. In what you may call a crazy vision, I heard my late husband say, "I didn't die so that baby could live, I had to die so you could."

I heard it in my head, and I have never hated myself more.