I watch her every day struggle to swallow food, or just to get it to go all the way down. Today during dinner it took her almost an hour to get a single bite all the way down to where she couldn’t feel it anymore. I sat on the edge of my seat, unmoving, for a long time, calmly, as I talked with her about whether or not I should take her to the ER. I don’t know jack, really, when it comes to what we are dealing with. But I do know that I am enraged at a Sickcare system in which I have been working feverishly to get her a swallow study from speech pathology because her life is in jeopardy every time she eats. For at least three weeks I have been working to get this done. But there is the weekend again, or a holiday, or my wife’s doc doesn’t work on Monday. Or the referral’s been sent and they will call you. And you wait. And you wonder why the hell isn’t somebody doing something.
Because I love my wife so dearly--she is my everything--I struggle to grasp why it must take so long to get her the proper care she urgently needs when it is obvious enough to me what she needs. I stop for her every need. I am addicted to serving her, to loving her, to jumping and immediately providing her every single request. Not that it has always been thus. I am no saint.
Oddly, both my wife and I are actually grateful for her illness. But perhaps it is not so odd, because we believe God is blessing us with a necessary opportunity for more improvement and growth as we draw closer to each other than we ever have before by many times over.
But every time she eats my anxiety shoots through the roof. She has choked several times the past month and she keeps reducing her choice of food, and I think I am unsure just how to process the fact that my wife could literally choke to death at any time.
But my Eva has an indomitable spirit and faces the increasing loss of strength and energy, the constant twitching, the muscle spasms, the increased uselessness of her tongue, her speech, and every other worsening symptom with faith in God and a resiliency that inspires me. I fall in love with her more every day and for the life of me cannot fathom why the world does not stop and notice when she has another loss of function.
She soldiers on, tired, occasionally frustrated, but with joy as I cry for every loss she either gently shares with me or I see for myself. I cry, perhaps so the world will see my tears and realize that something must be done. I weep at every unstable step that witnesses this bold confident woman is being disabled in real time right before my eyes.
And while I weep, my beautiful amazing wonder of a wife gives me a goofy look that chases the tears and makes me laugh. And then she’ll gently wipe my eyes and tell me she’s glad that I cry because I need to let it out, and besides it shows to her how much I really love her.
And so we are grateful for her illness for how it has already blessed our lives with a love deeper than either of us has ever known even while knowing it will test us to the center of our souls.
I just wish the world around us would stop too--just every now and then—and cry with me. For the loss, when it comes, will be great.
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