Dear Charming,
You've been home for over two months now... it's hard to believe that you've been home longer than you were in the hospital. In fact, it's hard to believe that you've been home longer than you were in a coma. For fifteen days, the world just stopped. At least, my world did. Everything since has been a blur, in slow motion...
I write this tonight because I realize that everything that I experienced in those weeks that you were in the hospital didn't just magically go away when you came home. We are on a journey here... one that began that fateful day, and still continues. Knowing your hatred for hospitals and doctors, I don't honestly know what keeps you going back twice a week for therapy, but I'm glad that you are doing it. I can't imagine the terror of stepping out of your home one day to go to work, and then waking up in a hospital being told you almost died. Coma. That's a big thing. An experience that few people go through, and even fewer survive to tell the tale of. I don't know what to make of the fact that through the fog that you are sure you could hear me singing. So many moments I stood by your bed, wondering if you could feel me or hear me... wondering if it was making a difference.
No, I certainly don't know what you went through... and you don't know what I went through, either. You are my life... it's hard to think I went through this life-changing event with you and yet without you, at the same time. When faced with time apart, you and I don't go more than two waking hours, if that, without some form of contact... a phone call, a text message, an email... something that reaches out to the other. When you were still in the hospital, I found an email from August where you said you wanted to start working out and get healthy because you couldn't imagine leaving the kids and me behind... it comforted me to know that you would want me fighting to keep you here, that you weren't ready to go. It also saddened me, because at that time, things were very uncertain and I knew you didn't want to go... it broke my heart to think that you could be ripped away from us. It's hard to go through something was so big without being able to talk it out with your best friend... you were there... close, and yet so far away. I couldn't ask your advice... or curl up in the bed just to be near you. I slept in a tiny chair in the corner of a freezing cold room... because I couldn't bear to be anywhere else.
I created this blog to chronicle the journey... and hopefully beyond it. To look back and say "we survived this" and turn the page and start writing of all our little journeys together from here on out. I have been lax, I admit, in doing this since you came home. The early days were spent taking care of you... a lot of ups and a few downs. I've come to realize that as much as you are dealing with depression, so am I... You are faced with your own mortality... and my youth and innocence have been ripped away. In short, I'm scared, Charming. You and I always knew that, one day, one of us would have to face this world without the other. This isn't Hollywood... rarely do couples lay down together in their bed when they are ninety, fall asleep in each other's arms, and never wake up. Having such little exposure to death at a young age, it has always scared me. The unknown. Not that I was scared to die. But, there are so many ways that someone can die, my fear has always been: how am I going to go and is it going to hurt? We all march towards the same inevitable end, Charming... no getting around it. Is it going to hurt? To think of your last conscious moment being in the street, in pain... just the thought of it still bothers me.
My youth and innocence? I'm getting to that... when we decide to spend our lives with someone you always know there will come a day when they have to live without you, or vice versa. You and I used to joke... you'd catch a cold and joke that I'd feel bad about it if you died. I'd tell you that you weren't dying... and it wasn't going to be a problem, because I planned on going first anyway. "I'm out of here next Thursday," I'd laugh. You know it's going to happen someday... but when you are young, that "day" seems so far off in the future... very Scarlett O'Hara "I won't think about it today... I'll think about that tomorrow..." you know it's there... but you picture being in your 80's when that day comes. I always did. (And let me tell you, I BETTER be in my 90's before I have to deal with it again!!) "We'll be old and gray..." you think. You never think it could be now... it could be today. That playful youthful innocence is gone... that "day" will come... and it feels very real. No longer a far off image of someday... I've had a momentary glance at what that day could look like.. could FEEL like... and I'm terrified. Not just a little scared... but paralyzed with fear. I feel like I barely survived this... I'm ashamed say I almost didn't survive this. The only thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other was that you weren't completely gone. And it didn't matter what any doctor told me... or what statistics on websites said... as long as you were alive, there was hope... I gave rousing speeches to our kids about how we weren't going to give up until you came home. I admit, these speeches were more to convince me than to convince them. I'm sure one day they will tell stories to their own kids about how "solid" I was during this time. Someday I'll get to be their rockstar mom who never lost hope or gave up. In reality, I was a mess... it frightens me to think that someday I could be served up the real thing... that this was just the dress rehearsal. One day, Charming, one of us will have to face the world without the other... I pray to God that it's not me.
I love you,
Snow
