During the good times, we continue making our videos. They’ve gotten shorter and shorter, though. Less and less animated. Now, they’re more or less little thoughts that Lena wants to pass on to her daughter, disjointed words of wisdom sprinkled with the occasional anecdote.
I treasure them just as much as I do the ones that make perfect sense, but they’re harder to watch. It’s as though I can see my wife fading right before my eyes. She’s a pale, ghost-like version of the vibrant woman who’d begun making the videos, and each second of film is like a stake to my heart.
Today, I’m aiming my phone at her, nodding for her to begin. When she does, my stomach crunches up into an unbearable knot of grief.
“Laugh often and love deep, little Grace,” she says, her eyes seeming to look through the camera lens as if she can already see her daughter’s face somewhere on the other side of it. “Fill your jar. As long as your jar is full, your life will never be empty. And every chance you get, put your face in the sun, and show the wind how to fly. Be fearless, my baby girl. Be fearless.”
Usually she ends each video with a smile, a bright one that belies what’s going on in her life, in her body. But this time, her voice cracks, and her brow pleats as she struggles not to show her true emotion. I wait for several seconds, wait for her to recover and either continue or end it, but she never does. She just sits quietly on the couch with her head bowed. Through the screen of my camera, I watch her. I catch the steady rise and fall of her chest and realize she’s drifted off to sleep.
She does that more and more often these days—just falls asleep. Nods off unexpectedly. She’s beginning to sleep more than she’s awake.
I wonder how long it will be before she just doesn’t wake up at all.
I know eventually that will happen. She’ll slip into a coma and never wake up.
That is my last thought every single time she dozes off—Will I ever get to see your beautiful eyes again?
I press the record button to turn off the video. Slowly, I rise to my feet and walk silently from the room. Only I’m around the corner and out of sight do I sink to the floor, running my fingers into my hair and giving in to the sensation of defeat.
I save all the fight I have left for my wife. I keep my chin up for her. Anything to keep her going.
But when she can’t see me, I crumble.
********
The following week, when Lena is thirty-one weeks along, the pain begins. The first thing I noticed was her grabbing her right side and wincing, gasping and holding her breath for a few seconds.
“You okay?” I asked initially.
Each time she’s done it, I’ve watched my wife gather her courage, the fight she refuses to let go of, and smile.
I watch her put on her own mask.
“Yep. Just a little twinge.”
Over time, the “little twinges” have come more and more frequently and lasted longer and longer. Mr. Li is coming twice per week now, doing everything he can to ease her discomfort. Different herbs and teas and powders. More acupuncture and aromatherapy and guided imagery. Nothing seems to help very much, though. Lena just grits her teeth and gets through the pain, smiling at me once they’ve passed as if nothing is wrong.
Even in her sickness, even in her pain, she’s constantly trying to comfort me, to make me think everything is okay, that she is okay. But I can see right through her efforts. Of course, I can. I know her.
I know her.
I can see the odd pallor of her skin, the circles under her eyes, the dazed expression she carries more often than not. I can plainly see that she is not okay.
There are times when I want to scream at her to show me how she really feels, to stop hiding it from me. Some part of me gets angry about it because sometimes it feels like she’s trying to protect me because she thinks I can’t handle it, that I’m not strong enough. But the rational part of my brain always slows my roll, reminding me that this is just who Lena is. She’s nurturing, loving, protective. This is her way of loving me the best way she can.
The only way she knows how.
That’s why I squash those stubborn bursts of anger. There’s no room for ego or pride or selfishness anymore. There’s just not.
As it turns out, the pains in her side were only the beginning, the beginning of worse things to come. Little by little, Lena’s ability to eat is becoming compromised.
At first, I learned to blend nutritious shakes for her to eat, anything to offset the whole foods she was no longer able to swallow. I added the herbs that Dr. Li recommended to help with her pain and with her liver function, and for a while it seemed to work. Her weight didn’t suffer, and her labs, all but a few, looked good, so I kept that up.
For the most part, she’s existed on those shakes for two weeks. It wasn’t hard for me to see when the tides were taking another turn for the worse, though. Lena began to get choked trying to swallow drinks of the shakes. She also began to get tired more and more quickly.
But now I know things are going downhill. No suspecting or guessing or supposing. I know.