This isn't easy. We put on our FaceBook faces and make jokes and dream about our future and sing love songs but the truth is we share every day as if it might be our last. Our honesty with each other is what makes us, well, us. It's why we're still together, it is why we nearly weren't. I feel like I need to tell our truth here a little.
Sometime our online characters overshadows our actual selves and I truly want you to know me as I am. We are realists, fully aware of our place in the universe as it currently sits. The fragility of our aging bodies is more real than ever. I too suffer from largely untreated Graves disease and I really should be taking it more seriously. As we plan our next adventure it is all prefaced with the fact that we are not young anymore. Everything is more difficult, everything takes longer and damn if it hasn't come down to where I, ME of all people, I occasionally need help. That is very difficult for me to accept.
I can't fix this. All my skills, all my tools and equipment, all my passion and there is nothing of consequence that I can do.
You may already know that wakitu is going in for a simple (for most folks) procedure. It doesn't really matter what it is just know that it is surgery and it involves anesthesia. She also suffers from severe pulmonary emphysema and THAT is the problem. Those two things, anesthesia and emphysema, do not mix. The danger is very, very real. Being realists we have discussed it, at length, as we do. We know what the danger is and with the help of the amazing staff and The City of Hope we have hope. OHHH! MAAAANNN!! "Hope!!" City of... I TOTALLY get it now!!!
We cried, we laughed, we yelled at god, we thought about punting, we thought about dying, about being alone, about making it worse, all the things you go through "the night before." We settled on trusting the doctors who are and have been taking such good care of her. They love her, you can feel it. The risk versus reward to improve her quality of life seems to be on our side this time. That doesn't make it easier but it makes it make sense.
So what am I trying to say here? I don't really know for sure.
It feels like I should be real about what is really happening with us 'cause sometimes we have these conversations in our head that we would have with our friends... if they were close. We have become so close with our internet family it seems wrong not to share my truths with you as if you were sitting next to me sharing my air.
This season of forced isolation has done nothing but improve our relationship - together 24/7 works for us as we do well at finding time to be "alone" together and we respect each other's space. Above all we tell each other the truth no matter what.
To that end I say to you my love: I will find a way to carry on, if this is our last day together, as you would want me to. I will remember our days as the best days of my life. I will hang our pictures on the walls of our new home and sip coffee with you and our memories in the morning by the stream. I will fill that house with love and music and the sounds of children laughing with blueberry lips and otter pop tongues.
