nocturnal

This post is very full of raw emotion.  I warned you I would

not sugar coat the bad moments.

To write for me is cathartic and healing and I will not 

apologize for the angst and pain that is very real in these words.

I will not, NOT feel.

I promise I will write of beauty and hope when I have that too.

This weekend was tough, and so I write to remember these times 

as well.

Remember how I said nights are the worst?

Well, they are.

Sleep comes sometimes in fragmented lengths of minutes and hours.

Sometimes we wake up and talk for an hour or two, or hold each

other and then go back to sleep.

Exhausted.

Last night we lay in bed and looked at the clock.

It read 9:55.  P.M.

We laughed at ourselves and said, "You know you have cancer when

you're in bed at 9:55..."

Soon Kyle's breathing was even and he fell asleep.

I don't remember sleeping, but woke at 11:30 and he was gone from the bed.

His body has new aches and pains.  

Liver cancer also causes strange body temperature fluctuations.

Sometimes he is freezing and sometimes he is flushed and hot.

He has to adjust his sleeping arrangements to help adjust 

his body temperature. 

He starts in our bed and sometimes has to move to the floor

to regulate temperature.

Hot to cool.

Sometimes he heads to the basement couch.

Cool to cooler.

At which point I always wake in a panic and call his name begging 

him to start all over in the bed.

Last night, I had a bad dream.

Three times.

And went back to sleep.

On my own.

Twice.

At 3:30 I woke again.

Another bad dream.

Guns and trains and cowboys, go figure!

The third time...

At 5 A.M., I woke again with a sob caught in my throat.

THIS dream, the one hanging on in my subconscious, was about death and dying.

I couldn't breath,

I couldn't breath,

I couldn't breath,

and I couldn't feel my husband beside me.

I called him name, dreading the fact that I was waking him--

yet needing him beside me to sooth and calm my soul.

He came, because he is Kyle, and held me.

My body racked with sobs as I tried to tell him that even 

though I was awake, the nightmare had not gone away.

And I wonder HOW I will find the strength to exist and breath

and continue when he is not here to hold me.

I share these feelings, because they are raw.

And real.

It feels like the pain has been rubbed by sandpaper this weekend.

Sometimes there are NO WORDS that can soothe me.

I desperately claw for comfort, 

From somewhere.

From something.

It doesn't come.

No prayer, or book, or meditation, or promise of hope, can fill me with the peace I desperately seek.

And so my husband holds me and tells me he loves me 

here

and now.

And this is what I've got for today...

(I'm sorry this one was so depressing, but sometimes 

cancer is depressing.)