ANDER
The time for the transfusion has arrived. Her body held it together long enough to get to this date. I sit in the waiting room, waiting for news. When the doctor finally comes out, I don’t know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or devastation. He shares with me the best news I have had in months. The transfusion went well. Now all we can do is wait and see if it takes. In the study on this treatment, over half the people who had this done had the transfusion take, with or without a familial match. This was with her own stem cells, completely new and uncorrupted. In my head, I can see no possible bad outcome for this, but the doctor continues to caution against getting my hopes up. He says people with recurrent NHL, like Leire, typically don’t survive as long as she has and that we are already lucky. I choose to see this as a fact that she was just meant to survive for us. He says it will take time to see results, sometimes two to six weeks, and she will be receiving everything from anti-viral to anti-fungal to anti-bacterial drugs. They will be watching for any signs of graft versus host disease, and that I still won’t be allowed to see or hold her until her blood count is stabilized.
After all the build up to this transplant, maybe Leire was right. Maybe this is just a shot in the dark and I am placing all my hopes and dreams on something that may not work. As I silently turn to leave the ward, I make my way to the front of the hospital and find a bench to sit on. I sit for who knows how long before realizing my hands are in my pocket and touching that letter. A letter I have been avoiding. A letter I better read because even I am losing hope. I open it up to see Leire’s familiar handwriting on the page, something I haven’t seen for months.
Ander-
I don’t even know how to begin a letter like this and I hope that it is just that…a letter we fold up and forget about, living together to raise our family. But odds being what they are, that is not likely. I know we haven’t been speaking and I have said some extremely mean things to you. For that, I am so very sorry. You are the only love in my life, besides this little life in my belly for whom I am sacrificing everything. I know you don’t understand why I did what I did, and I know you love me with all your heart. That is why it hurt so badly when I made the decision I did. But I couldn’t be responsible for ending a life that was a miracle to begin with. I could not live with that on my conscience.
Ander, you are so very special. I don’t think you see yourself the way I do. The strong, protective male. The man who works himself to the end of his rope to make ends meet so his family, even when they are not his family, can have a happy and easy life. I see it. I see the tiredness. Did you think you could hide that from me? Ander, I would love you if you were the homeless guy sitting on the corner who we used to see during the summer. What you do and how much you make has nothing to do with who you are as a person. You are amazing. You are caring and gentle. You love even when people toss that love back at you. You are so very strong. Look at you. Look at how far you have made it with me. That is quite a load to bare. Yet you are still with me, even while being a single dad.
Speaking of being a dad… I hope Bug looks just like you. I cannot get my head around the fact that I am having a baby. That my body, which has NEVER worked the way it should, produced something so perfect and amazing. But, seriously, honey, Bug cannot be his name forever. I know you well-enough to know that no matter how much time has passed since I had him and you are reading this letter, if I am still holding on, he is still Bug. So here is my compromise. His name is Ryan Liam. You and me…our roots. You are going to be an amazing dad. Read to him often. Boys struggle with that. Tell him he is smart even when he fails, as long as he tried his hardest. Tell him his mother loved him beyond her own life and gave it willingly for him. He should have no guilt over this. It was my decision and mine alone. I know you disagree, but I think he is worth it and that you are going to do great. Teach him to be respectful of women, keep him away from Wyatt, and treat them like treasures, like you did with me.
Teach him to play sports and musical instruments. Don’t put him in one place and expect him to fit. Sometimes there is a round peg in a square hole. Don’t make him feel bad for the things he likes or dislikes, including relationships. You and I never had a discussion about how you feel about same sex relations, but please respect our son and who he decides to be. You will teach him that love is love and everyone deserves it. It took me a while to learn that, as a cancer patient, even I deserved love. You were the one who taught me that. I hope you can teach him love and equality in all ways.
Ander, I knew I loved you from the moment I walked through your shop’s door. I just never knew what love felt like, have never imagined myself in the position of being loved. But there you were, staring at me like I was some crazy fool wandering in off the streets, probably looking at you with bewilderment in my eyes. But we persevered and I am so glad we did. We may have made mistakes and fought. In any normal relationship, there would be time for us to make up, because I know we would. A love like ours doesn’t happen every day. A love like ours is epic. It is for the storybooks. And I hope you tell Ryan our story. I hope you tell him how a scared and lonely woman walked through your doors and into your life. I hope you tell him how we got to know each other over your mom’s cooking, and how we got his sister back. I hope you tell him all about the things we managed to do in the little time we were given.
Mostly, I hope you know that no matter how this ends, I LOVE YOU. I love you with every fiber in my being, with everything I am. You are my one and only. I would have been happy with you for the rest of our lives. I want you to continue life and live it to its fullest. Take Ryan places like Disneyland and Italy. Travel the globe with him to places of which I could only dream. Find him a mother, someone who will love you and him as much as I love you both. I know that is hard to hear, but you will have to move on. Ryan needs his dad to be there, and a dad who is constantly mourning isn’t. So mourn me, miss me, love me, but do not pity me or feel guilty over anything. Move on in life. It kills me to even think of you and my baby with another woman, but I want you to be happy, and every child deserves a chance at two parents. So please, for my sake, try. Just try.
I love you. I will always love you. I will be waiting for you.
~Leire
I don’t know how long I sit there crying before someone notices and sits next to me. They don’t touch me or say anything, just give support by being there. I must have read her letter a million times. Just seeing her handwriting is amazing to me, even if I hate what the letter contains. And the name, Ryan Liam… I guess I can’t complain. It is a good name and one his mother had chosen. However, I will fight the rest of the letter. Leire won’t die. She can’t because I will, too. I know she said to move on, but that will never happen. Like she said, we have a storybook love and they happen so rarely. Why in the world would I ever try to replace that?
Ryan will know his mom because she will be there to raise him. Right now, I feel completely useless. There is nothing I can do or say to make Leire’s body heal, so I decide my only option is hope. I am going to hope like hell that this works, being there every day to make sure of it. I will bring Ryan to see her strength. He will see her smile and eyes, knowing she is there for him. I will do what the letter asks, but in my own way. With that thought, I straighten myself out and head back to her room.
LEIRE
Sometimes, in the middle of the night or in the calm after a big storm, when the world seems new and fresh, when one can feel the rightness of the world falling into place, I forget. This is my favorite time…the point between old and new, fresh and used. It used to be the point when I would pretend that I, too, was fresh and new. I would stand in the rain and shower off the old me, shedding it like the skin of a snake, letting the terrors and pain go with it. I fooled myself into thinking it would leave me fresh, but now I know the truth. No one can truly shed their past. It is always there. It is always looming, a shadow with which you learn to live. Living is what you focus on. When I look down and s
ee scars, I don’t feel the terror and smell the fear. I no longer feel the need to escape or release. I run in these early hours, in the rain and storms other people stay out of, for a completely different reason.
Dressed in my running gear, I open myself up to the release I still get from lacing up my shoes, and I step out the door. I know I can’t outrun my past, but I have no need to. I know I cannot escape the fears and pain, or erase the scars, but don’t want to. My release now is completely different. With each pounding footstep, I feel calmer and more ready to face my day. I feel strong and I can see a new day rising. What is done, is done. I cannot change that. I am a new person with a new name and a new life. The run clears my mind and as I reach the end, the clearing of aspens, leaves now turning again, looking golden and on fire in the early morning sun, I feel renewed.
I love these mountains and their glorious, ever-changing beauty, and as I remember what is at home for me, I turn and head back. I don’t need the trees as proof that creation is something to be in awe of anymore. I don’t need them as proof that life goes on. The world turns, the sun rises and sets, and no one will remember what once was, but I am now okay with that because it is who I am now that matters.
Out of breath but still full of energy, I head back home to my crazy house full of love and laugher. It is a house full of a family that fought to make it. We continue to fight every day, but we love and we laugh every day, too. When I get to the steps, the front door flies open. “Mommy!” Suddenly, a sticky, syrupy mess is squirming in my arms. “We had nancakes!”
I smile at my son, then look up and see my husband, the man who never stopped believing and, in the end, gave me and all the doctors the hope I needed to survive. I know it was a miracle, I know I surpassed expectations, but I also know my husband’s love and support were a part of that, no matter what science and the studies say. They say I was a success, which is all that counts.
I squeeze my sticky mess close, then step up to my husband for a kiss that quickly turns heated. It’s a good thing we have a daycare because I think today may be a hot for teacher day. A day spent hiding myself, yet being the most free I have ever been. Today, I start again.
THE END
One More Breath Page 19
