He Didn’t Tell Me He Was Dying
True love?
* Friends, Thank you all for taking some time out of your precious day to read my stories. There are many new subscribers, thanks to y’all, so I’ve decided to post some of my original stories for the next few weeks. Many of you have not read these stories from the early days.
I started this Pages By The Sea page back in September 2024. No big expectations, just wanted to write some ideas bouncing around in my head. Ideas on death and how it affects us and how we should face it instead of fear it.
Enjoy these little snapshots of Life.
He didn’t tell me he was dying. My husband of thirty seven years.
He didn’t tell me he was being eaten alive from the inside out. He had been coughing for years, off and on. Nothing to it, just a result of his construction work and outdoor active lifestyle. Maybe some new allergies or something like that. We even joked that he had lung cancer.
He did. He knew it. I did not.
I had been telling him to go to the doctor for years. He actually disliked the doctors with a passion. He had not had a physical in four years. “I feel fine, best I’ve felt in many years” he told me.
But then one morning he was out walking the dogs and he had a coughing and gagging spell that took his breath away. It lasted for five or six minutes and it scared him. He doesn’t scare easily. He called the doctor and made an appointment.
He didn’t tell me. I learned all this later, at the end.
I had thought he was at work. He was getting tests and CT scans and MRI’s.
It was advanced, very advanced.
It was over for him. He knew it. The doctor knew it.
I didn’t know it.
He got all the paperwork in order. He prepared everything for me. He didn’t want me cursing his name after he was gone, he told me later. He wanted me secure. He loved me.
But he didn’t tell me he was dying.
He hid the increased coughing from me the best he could. One early morning I heard him in the bathroom having a coughing fit. It was bad. I got scared. I had a sick feeling in my heart. I got up and entered the bathroom. I comforted him as he leaned over the sink. His eyes were tearful.
“We need to go to the beach today,” he said as he turned and hugged me. A strong, deep heartfelt hug. I felt a teardrop on my bare shoulder.
As we sat in our beach chairs gazing out out at the deep blue sea, he told me everything.
“Don’t get mad,” he started and looked at me with the most caring, loving, sad eyes I hadn’t seen since our youth. “I love you more than I have expressed over the years. I have not said it enough. I am sorry for that.” He held my hand and told me the story.
The beach was his favorite place in the whole world. Any beach anywhere was fine with him. His toes in the sand, the endless expanse of ocean, the sound of relentless waves, these all grounded him and eased his soul. It was in him and he was in it.
We walked along the sand, his feet and ankles in the oncoming waves. He held my hand the entire day.
I did not get mad. I understood. He said he did it to save me from the pain, the long mental and psychological pain. He said he wanted to have these final days together. He wanted to die on his terms. He meant it. I was witnessing it play out.
“Never am I going to a nursing home. Never will I die in a hospital bed, full of tubes and lying half naked in a cheap gown.” He had always said that for as long as I had known him.
We got home that evening after a full day at the beach. He was calm and relaxed and, dare I say it, joyous.
“I’m tired. Let’s go to bed. Will you hold me?” he asked as he took my hand and led me into our sanctuary.
He laid in my arms and I held him all night. “I love you more than anything. You have been my rock and my soulmate. I have been a blessed man, more than I deserve.”
Those were the last words he said to me. We had fallen asleep in an all encompassing love, wrapped in each other’s comforting arms.
When I awoke, he did not.
He was asleep forever. Tears fell from my eyes. I stroked his hair as I held him just a little longer.
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