Today would have been Felecci’s 41st birthday. I thought I’d be able to carry that shit today. Till everything hit me again when getting ready for work.
See, I had to make a choice after about 12 hours of Felecci being sedated. Wake her up, let her sister speak to her who flew in from Vegas, or let her sleep and be free from the anxiety of slowly suffocating to death because Cancer was attacking her lungs and heart.
The problem was that she was at peace with her decision the night before. She knew this was the end once she went under. I made sure to explain her choices to her the way doctors never do. No one tells you when it is your time, you are supposed to figure that shit out for yourself. But we had talked about this time before. She told me she didn’t want to suffer, and she wanted to know when the time came that there were few options. She wanted to understand them clearly. And she wanted to make her decision.
Part of me knew she also wanted my input. She hated making tough decisions, she agonized over them. But this wasn’t a decision I could bring myself to make. I mean, I love her. To decide if she stays awake in major discomfort or sleeps till she dies? Fuck, how do you make that choice for someone? It’s impossible. The arguments you have with yourself when exploring that decision makes the House of Commons look like a well-run institution of decision making.
In the end, I told her truthfully. I can’t make this decision. But it is going to be bad no matter what you do. Reject the morphine being offered, and continue to gasp for air no matter how much oxygen they feed you. Run a 170 heart rate at rest as your body struggles till it finally gives out.
Or take the morphine. And go to sleep, never to see me as a mortal ever again. When this situation came, I fought every instinct in my body to try to make her stay. There was maybe 15% of me that felt that if she decided to take the morphine that I should try to dissuade her. But that 15% of me that knew to respect her decision was logic and reason. God was going to get his angel sooner or later, and there was no stopping it. So why make her suffer more than she already has?
To wake her, give her sister closure meant making Felecci make that decision twice. She struggled with it. She didn’t want to die, but she feared how this deterioration was going. We were at the point where doctors wanted to cut into her lung and drain fluid while she was awake and on no anesthesia except a local. But her heart was too fragile to even get her out of bed to move her. Her heart nearly crashed during the attempt.
To make her have to make that decision again, go thru that fear. Or to see her sister one last time. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever know if I made the choice she would have made. I just wanted her torment to stop. To wake up and not be face to face with God and to start struggling again. She was hanging on by a thread when she made this decision. The weight that lifted off of her when she knew it was her time. I couldn’t make her do that decision again. We spoke in the past that she just wanted to go when it was her time. She believed she would exist as…..something….after it was over.
I made the hardest decision I have ever had to consider. And I knew that I will never know it was the right one. But it guaranteed her less suffering.
Which brings me to you, God. I don’t know what you are exactly. But I don’t believe we are here by accident. I know we are less important than we think we are, being so small relative to the universe and all. But why will us into existence only to have to see everyone we love die before us? I don’t understand what the point is. And before you strike my being from existence, I expect an explanation. I want to understand why I had to go thru this. Why she had to go thru this. What was the fucking point?
And why, in my second year of living with the aftermath of this does it get harder to deal with her holidays? I was good till I got in the shower this morning. Then it hit me again, just like when I was in her hospital room for 40-howeverthefuck many hours it was.
I’d like to think that if this all had some real purpose; that our suffering served to meet some end that I will find worthwhile; that this shit would be easier to carry. But I am only mortal, and I can’t understand the will of the universe and creation. I think if I had the clarity to understand, that I would be ok with trading that for my being.
I guess my biggest fear in life is that the struggle is for nothing. Thanks for reading. And happy 41st birthday to the person who made the single biggest impact on me in my life. I hope there is some part of you still out there with a better understanding of why than I possess.
Mahal kita. Palagi kitang mamahalin. I looked up the second one. I wish you were around to help my Brooklynite ass pronounce it.
Life Love and Loss 