I Don't Want to Lose You (38 page)

             
“How are you?” he asked.

             
“I'm as well as can be expected,” I answered.  “Thank you for coming.”

             
A nurse came in and said that there was one too many people in the room and someone needed to leave.  Ralph and I looked at her.

             
“I'm not leaving,” Mrs. Cabrera said.

             
After seeing that one person was a new visitor and I was actually doing something with the patient that was helpful, the nurse sternly convinced her that she needed to go to the waiting room.  It didn't happen without a nasty look being shot at me first.

             
Ralph sat down in her empty chair after grabbing the book and greeting Theo.  He read while I continued with the exercises.  When I finished with the exercises, we took turns reading until he couldn't take it anymore.

             
A couple of days later I had followed the new routine until lunch time, which was when I had an obstetrics appointment.  It was time to see if the sex of the baby could be determined.  It felt weird to go to the most climatic appointment alone.  The baby was in the right position for the gender to be determined.

             
I was excited that Theo had lived long enough for me to able to tell him what we were having, but it was a little bittersweet.  After eating lunch, I was alone in the hospital room with him, for a change, but decided to whisper the news in his ear to be able to say that I told him and that he knew.

             
The moment that I had been waiting for finally happened.  I knew it was coming; it was just a matter of when.  As I walked up to the entrance of the hospital to start the day, his mother was outside waiting for me.  Without saying good morning, she asked me if I would sit down.  We sat on a nearby bench.

             
“I know you love my son,” she started, “but his father and I think it's time to let him go.”

             
“What made you two come to this conclusion?” I asked.  With the way she had been treating me lately, I wasn't going to make it easy.  I knew what I was doing when it came to letting him go and nothing she could possibly say was going to change my mind.

             
“We know that he is in pain.  He's not able to stay alive on his own.  For every day that he's just laying there, the more money it's going to cost us and the more he has to suffer.”

             
“So is this really a money thing?”

             
“How dare you ask me that?” she asked.

             
“You brought it up, not me.”

             
She nodded and calmly said, “I did.”  She paused before saying, “My son appeared to have signed some paper saying that you have to make the decision about his life.  I'm begging you to stop my baby's suffering.”

             
“I want you to understand something.  As his wife, that's not how I want to see him.   I don't want these past couple of weeks to be a part of my memory of him.”  I wiped my eyes to keep the tears that had formed from falling onto my cheeks.  “I am the last person on this earth who wants to see him suffer.”

             
“Then you're going to speak to the doctor?” she asked with hope in her voice.

             
“No.  It's not time yet,” I calmly said.

             
“When will it be the time then?” she asked with irritation.

             
“Do you know why my voice is almost gone?”

             
“Because all you do is read that book to him all day” she answered.  “I don't know why.”

             
“Did he ever tell you about his list?”

             
She looked confused.  “What list?”

             
“After we got married, I asked him to write a list of things he wanted to try to do before he died.    That's why we did all of the things we did.  You may have thought that I was trying to run him ragged, but I was only trying to make his wishes come true. That book was on his list, which was why we were always reading it.  I don't even have fifty pages left to finish it. I'm hoping my voice will last long enough for me to do it.  But as long as I have my voice and he is still breathing, it will be finished for it to be checked off of his list.  Nothing else can be said to me to make me change my mind.  Not one word.  Now if you will excuse me, I want to see my husband.”  I got up and went to his room to start my routine.  I was already reading when she finally came into the room. 

             
When I got up to go get something for lunch, I was surprised that she asked me for the book and wanted to know where I stopped.  I showed her and she began to read before I was out of the room. By the next evening, with the help of his mother and Ralph, the book was finished.  Final check.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

             
I've always had mixed feelings about flowers. There are some women who take receiving them as a sign of love. While I did to an extent, I associated them with death which is why I never thought that flowers should be displayed after a certain amount of time.  Take a rose for instance, although any flower would suffice.  From its umbilical root, there's a tiny bud that grows in time.  Then the rose blossoms and shows off what it really is and what it really looked like behind that tiny, closed bud it once was, exuding beauty and a fragrant odor.  Eventually petals start to fall off, perhaps from the breeze of the wind, lack of nutrients or from the age of it.  Next thing you know, it slowly starts to get brown edges and look as though it's shriveling up and then it dies.               

             
Teodoro Cabrera was my favorite rose.

             
I brought the book home with me from the hospital.  I didn't have an appetite and I had to apologize to the baby for depriving it of nutrition.  I only wanted to sing along with my 80s CDs to take my mind off of what was to come and I did for a few hours.  I had asked my mother if she could take me to the hospital the next day because I didn't think I would be capable of driving myself home safely.

             
The next morning, I left my mom in the waiting room as I went to his room and waited for the doctor while sitting in the recliner holding his hand, foregoing the morning routine.  The doctor eventually came by to check on him and I told him of my decision and that I wanted it done soon with specific directions that it was not to be done until ten minutes after I had left his room and signed the papers.  I didn't want to watch him die and I didn't want to be in the hospital when he did either.

             
I hated that Manny wasn't able to come up to the room to say goodbye to him while he was still alive.  Ralph had said all he wanted to say to him the day before and didn't want to be around for it.  It was just going to be me and his parents. They finally arrived and I left the room and closed the door for them to have their final moments with him.  As I was outside the door, the baby was moving around quite a bit.  I wondered if it was from sensing my distress.  They came out after about fifteen minutes with red eyes and sniffling.  I told them what I had instructed the doctor about when to do it in case they wanted to stay, but know that I wasn't.

             
I walked into the room and closed the door behind me.  I stood there for a minute looking at him, wondering what in the world I was supposed to say.  How do you say goodbye to someone that you don't want to leave?  This wasn't an “I'll see you later” or next week goodbye. I slowly went over to him and grabbed his hand and kissed it while smothering it with tears. 

             
“Can you believe it, Theo?  For once I'm almost speechless.  I know you probably would have liked me to have done this sooner, but I hope you can forgive me in taking so long to finish the book.  I'm going to miss you.  You're my best friend and I don't know how I'm going to make it through each day without you.  But I don't want you to be in pain anymore or to suffer like this.  This isn't living and this isn't you.  I'm a better person for having known you and it has been my honor and deepest privilege to be your wife.”

             
I wiped my face and took a deep breath.  “I am so scared to have this baby, Theo.  I hope that I would do you proud as the mother of your child.  I remember all that you said and I'm going to do my best to comply, even with Ralph helping me.  I'll do it for you.”  I reached over and massaged his face where the mask didn't block it the same way I used to when there was hair there.  I rubbed his head and gave him little kisses all over it, leaving teardrops that slid down to his face.

             
I touched where his tattoo was.  “Your heart really did belong to me, longer than I had known.  I love you so much, Theo.”  I grabbed a tissue to wipe fresh tears.  “I'll treasure so many of the moments we shared and tuck them away in my mind and heart.”  A flashback of those moments flew at lightening speed through my brain.  I took a deep breath of air to bring myself to peace with my present, as I tried to keep my throat from closing up on me.  I put his hand on my cheek, although there was nothing behind it.  No warmth, no gentleness, no affection.  It was just a hand on my cheek, which gave me the courage I needed.  My Theo wouldn't have touched my cheek like that and I envisioned his petals floating along in the wind because the rose in front of me had faded away.  I leaned over to kiss both of his cheeks again.  I lifted his mask up and gave him a soft kiss.  I put it back on him and said, “I love you, Teodoro William Cabrera.”

             
I went around the room and gathered the items I had brought in for him and put them in a bag.  “Goodbye, love,” I said as I opened the door and left.

             
I could tell the nurses at the station were observing, but were trying to look occupied.  I walked over to them and told them it was time.  One of them went to get the doctor to go over the paperwork that I needed to sign saying that I was giving them authorization.  I signed everything with tears running down my cheeks and went over to his parents who were still standing outside the door.  I gave them both hugs and headed to the waiting room.  I was in my mother's car by 9:52 a.m.  His time of death was 9:57 a.m., June 8, 1999.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

              People have always amazed me as to their reactions when you don't perform up to their expectations.  They want to tell you to jump but they get upset when you're not jumping high enough.  I've learned to stop trying to meet their expectations and live up to my own.  My actions didn't have to please everyone around me because, at the end of the day, I'm the one who had to live with myself and my decisions.

             
The time from his death to the funeral went by so fast.  My co-workers collected almost four hundred dollars to help with funeral expenses.  His parents had a bit set aside, but not enough to cover everything.  I donated what I had in savings, which was mostly what I had received as graduation gifts and the little bit left over that my father had given me.  Our friends did a car wash, but that raked in about a little less than two hundred dollars.  I took a loan out from my parents for the balance with repayment promised in small monthly increments until I could get it all taken care of, which would take me a couple of years with a baby on the way.

             
I didn't go to view his body at the mortuary.  I had enough of seeing him lifeless and that wasn't my husband that was in the casket.  It was the shell he wore that was now made up by someone trying to make him look like he was sleeping instead of decaying.  At the funeral, I refused to walk past his open casket.  I just sat in my seat and waited for my family after paying their respects.  I did go and watch him be buried.  People wondered what was wrong with me as his widow because I hardly shed any tears throughout it all. My eyes were extremely red and puffy from all of the crying I had done up to that point and my eyes we literally in pain from it.  In the words of Lisa Lisa, I was all cried out.  I worked my brain into overdrive to block it all.  I was barely able to listen to his obituary being read.  I was hardly paying attention, feeling as if I were in a daze.  I wasn't there to play a role.  I was trying to get myself through it.