I made the mistake of listening to our wedding song tonight, the song that Sara walked down the aisle to (the hallway – we got married in our home). Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud. The first few notes hit, and then the first line “When your legs don’t work like they used to before” – and that was it. I turned into (and still am) a tearful, snotty, blubbering mess.
It was quick onset/drastic weakness in her legs that developed over a week and a half in mid October that led to Sara’s final hospitalization, from which she never came home. She kept saying that she knew something was really wrong, and she told the doctor that she was afraid she was past the point of help that first day we saw him, before we even knew about the continued metastasis. I told her that we would figure it out, and that we would get past this and get her into remission… but things never got better, and she never regained her mobility.
She’d been trying so hard during her cancer treatment to keep her spirits up and had bravely faced chemo and radiation and blood draws and scans and appointments… but something was different this time. Those last 2 weeks in the hospital were the absolute worst weeks of my life. I had to watch the life drain away from this beautiful, vibrant, amazing woman who I had loved and who had loved me for the best four years of my life.
That song really did represent our relationship – falling in love where we are, love working in mysterious ways. I never thought I’d find my soulmate on OK Cupid with a first date in Starbucks and a second date in a cemetery, but it happened and it was magical. Why did our life have to take a sharp turn? It was supposed to keep following the song – still loving each other when we were old together, at least 70 – we were supposed to have at least 30 more years together.
The tears are just flowing tonight and I can’t get them to stop. This is not how life was supposed to go. I know I say that (or something like that) in almost every post, and I’m convinced people are probably sick of reading about my sorrow… but I don’t know what else to do but to let this pain out in writing. At least people don’t have to read, if they don’t want to.
Some days are better than others. All days are at least a little sad, a little awful, but tonight – tonight’s just really, really hard. So I’m going to go change into comfortable clothes, and crawl into bed and put something mindless on the tv and snuggle up with the dogs and hope that somehow my heart is just not quite so heavy in the morning.