Reality, Juxtiposed

Kyle has lost 20 pounds in one week.

10 from Monday to Friday and 10 more from 
Friday to today.

I don't even want to tell you how many
pounds he is down in the past two months.

It's shocking and horrifying what cancer
can do to a body when it comes ravaging
through at the end of its stay.

We have DNR's hanging on our fridge next to
Christmas cards.

We're shopping for Christmas presents and
trying to pick songs for a funeral.

He vomits up everything he eats and people
keep bringing food into our house to nourish
our bodies.

Everyone around us is hustling and bustling
for the holidays, and he is getting slower
and weaker.

I'm thinking about wrapping gifts and
going to the hospital all in the same moment.

It seems absurdly silly that this his happening
now and I can't but shake my head at the 
impossibility, and reality, of it all.

It's such an interesting juxtiposition of
two contrasting seasons of life.

Being lived at the exact same time.

The world is celebrating lightness of
this Christmas season and our hearts are 
anguishing over another light being muted.

I crumple in my bed in tears and watch him
and watch him and watch him.....

And I see him shrinking away before me
everyday.

Literally.

We all tip toe around each other, pretending 
the lit up trees and Christmas lights are 
lifting our spirits...

But they're just lights, twinkling in a part
of some far off universe we no longer feel
like we belong to.

Everything is dimmer here.
The lights, the sounds, the beating of the human
heart.

We're gathering in and tightening our circle.

And life, as other people know it, goes on.

And our life has slowed to the tick of the clock
as it passes hour by hour.

We exhale and inhale and keep quiet watch.

Waiting for reality, while living in reality.

Both juxtiposed, one upon the other, in a beautiful,
harsh, hideous, heartbreaking, breathtaking,
unbelievable truth.

This is what I wish I didn't have, 
for today.