but who knows, or better yet, who cares? you are dead. dead. i can not and will not comprehend any of it. just about a week ago we held hands for the last time and neither of us knew that it would be the last time. each time that i walked out the door, i did wonder if i would ever return. after all, i reasoned, anything could happen to me and make me a statistic in a natural catastrophe or of a technical mishap. we have all been waiting for your death, and nobody ever dared to ask how long it would take until you were relieved from feeling your fast decaying body yield to disfunction. remember when your diagnosis came and we discussed suicide? you were afraid of the pain and the suffering; morphine helped. you never read what i wrote, and that was just fine with me; i liked this foreignness in our relationship. i brought you books written by my favorite authors and you read them. i shared with you a bit of my world, or at least i tried.
just about six months ago i showed you a corner of my life that i had never shared before, we had tea. i took you to a corner of my world, a world that was very foreign to you, and a world that disoriented you. we shared a room on occasions, and on others i made you endure my culinary diversions, you gave frank comment and pointed critic, and often we laughed about my experimentation. now one thing stands for sure, and that is that that picnic we had planned is just not going to take place.
what i wonder now is how quickly you resigned to your ill fate, you knew that you did not have much longer to live, you were paralyzed, you could barely speak, and you did not loose your sense of humour. there was no rage and anger in you, you just endured the suffering, rejoiced at the pretty faces of the medical staff, and you held my hand.
thank you for holding my hand, and sharing my world.
