An Elephant On My Chest

The anticipation of death is a strange thing.

I don't know if anyone can ever prepare themselves for the death of a loved one. Even if you know that the inevitable will happen, as it will with all of us, I don't think that there is anything that you can do to make it any more bearable.

For the past few months there has been a slight nagging at the back of my mind after every time I spoke to you. You have stopped walking in the mornings, a ritual that you have taken part in for the past forever number of years, come rain, hail, sleet or snow (but not when the South Easter is blowing). You haven't seemed able to shake the last of the winter chills, and boy, you guys have had a long and nasty winter. You tell me how the rain and the cold feels like it has been biting into your bones, and how you cannot wait for the summer. Even now that it is blisteringly hot, the cough that you have suffered with hasn't left you completely.

You are the antithesis of drama. Stubborn, yes. Pedantic, most definitely. Dramatic, decidedly not. When your wife nagged you enough, you went to see the doctor. He wanted you to go straight to a specialist, but you were off a few days later on your annual summer vacation, and you definitely weren't going to have anything upsetting that plan! You enjoyed yourself, but again when I spoke to you, you were saying how this would be your last year and that you were getting too old for the five hour drive down there.

Finally, you went to see the cardiologist yesterday. Not the news we had hoped for.

I need you to fight this out. I am just so not ready for this.
I feel like the slight gnawing I have felt over the past few months has taken over and become an elephant sitting on my chest. Each time I start entertaining the possibilities and what the next few months may hold I feel like the elephant gets heavier, and starts tucking into a Big Mac just to torment me.

I cannot go there yet. I am not sure if I ever can. Yet I know I will have to, sooner or later. I need you to make it later. I know that this is not about me alone. There are so many different relationships held in our family. Some tenuous, some strained, some unconditionally loving. I know that losing you would rip huge, gaping holes in the fabric of our lives, and I worry for all of us.

More than anything, and against all odds, I want you to be well and healthy.
I want this elephant on my chest to go away, and to get up, put my blinkers back on, and pretend that the inevitable is not just that.