A look back

I'm looking at the cards and letters we got from the Christmas of the year before you died. I looked at your card to me, and yes, I cried. You no longer had hope, but you had a heart full of love, and you tried to make life easier for me after you were gone. I didn't believe you would be gone in less than six months. It was inconceivable. Then I saw the family cards and letters. They all knew you needed a transplant, they all knew they should at least try, yet the letters and cards held nothing of promise. Self centered letters, self serving congratulations to themselves, and a tacit lie made to look like concern. Why is it today, when the world should be right, is it all so very wrong?

New advancements in medicine are made every day. I got a copy of the AAKP Renalife Magazine today, and once more read of the low risk of living organ donation, and the fact that living donors have a good quality of life, in spite of the misconceptions and misunderstanding of these facts. Perhaps I didn't do enough to educate them, but I know I tried. After all, they live in the "medical world" and consider themselves medical professionals.

I know it is too late for wishful thinking, but I know how different the world would be if you were here. I read about the latest research and results of familial transplants, and wish there had been another way for me to give you that gift of life. I wish we hadn't waited for their promises and excuses. I don't know if it would have made a difference, I do know that they never tried. Perhaps I was meant to find those letters and cards, to burn them, and to put this behind me for all time, but I feel the void so deeply, there is no way to put this away. You lived, you loved, you were here. Never would you have been so callous and unfeeling as to not do your damnedest to do the "right thing" to "step up to the plate" and as I read these long, drawn out missives of wonderful lives and dreams of others, I wonder if they ever feel the sadness of your loss? Do they admit they never tried? Or do they continue the lie to assuage themselves of the guilt they must surely feel. I will never put this "behind me" because you are still with me. You promised and I believe you keep that promise.

Why now?

It has been almost two years since he died. Why now? Why am I finally putting this story online for the world to see? Because it is time for the truth. Not the truth as I wish it were, but the truth as it is. No fiction, no semantics, just the plain hard facts. Until now, I felt that I needed to spare everyone's feelings, to "suck it up" as I was told by a former friend. I then had the good fortune to speak with a person who understood the process of loss and grieving. You mourn a loved one forever, but grief hits you in the heart like a bullet, it shatters you to the very core. It comes, without warning, at the smallest of moments, and you cannot control it.   

There will be those who will be angry that I am telling my husband's story publicly, because it is so much  easier to pretend it never happened.    There will no longer be any questions as to how he became ill, how he waited for a kidney transplant, and how he died. There will be no more denials, fabrications, and lies. The days of pretense are over.

I will put these first words on the page, because they continue to haunt me every day. They are like shards of glass in my heart, and the memory of that moment can never be erased.

"Ask them, ask them! There were so many of them, why couldn't one of them have given me a kidney? They knew it was only my family that could, she knew, they knew. Ask them.  Promise me?" And his tears flowed from those azure blue eyes, onto my cheeks, mingling with mine. He held me, tightly, as I kissed him, over and over, not knowing, not wanting to believe that he would soon be gone from this earth forever.

I will continue to use his words "Ask them." in these blog posts, because to this day, the answers have eluded me. The truth obscured.  One thing I pray is that those who read this blog will remember the small reminders I place within these words.  If it saves just one life, it will be a tribute to the man I love. He will not have died in vain.