Your body was frail, and your movements were slow.
I watched you from the other side of the room.
I avoided eye contact because I didn’t want you to see the pain gathering in my eyes, I didn’t want you to glimpse the fear that captured my heart and I couldn’t bare to show the uncertainty of my mind.
The small needles in your arm kept you from being too conscious.
I watched as you would slowly fall into a sleep as you sat at the edge of the bed.
Where would you go? What were you thinking?
We didn’t talk much towards the end.
You coughed a lot and always had to spit out the yellow acid-like fluid.
Your breathing was heavy and never consistent. I hated listening to that.
It broke my heart to watch you like this.
I began to see emptiness in you.
Where light once lived, darkness slipped in.
Where joy once resided, fear was making a home.
Where life used to be abundant, I could see the spaces growing emptier.
I wonder what you were thinking, what you were feeling.
You were never a person to share your feelings.
You kept them wrapped up like a butterfly in its cocoon.
Only when you were ready did you let me pull them out.
But I didn’t this time, I didn’t ask you to share them.
I wasn’t sure if you wanted to.
Did you want to? Would you have told me if I had asked?
I think there are parts of me that didn’t want to know, only because I had no idea how to comfort you.
Just like in the beginning, I had no idea what to say.
I would have never in a million years thought that I would be viewing you on a hospital bed, lifeless.
The borrowed breath taken back.
The color in your face, drained.
The warmth in your hands, now cold.
The radiation from your soul, gone.
I met death for the first time that day.
And I had no words for him.
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