Fruit and Chocolate

So this is what it feels like.

I began shaking in the waiting room as I waited to be told my husband successfully completed shoulder surgery. I shook so violently that I got up and walked around and eventually walked myself downstairs and across the street to a nearby market.

My heart was beating so fast I thought for sure the cashier would see it come out of my chest as I paid for my fruit and chocolate.

Fruit and chocolate? Who buys fruits and chocolate anyway while their husband lays split open on an operating table?

Is this how he felt during all my surgeries? Is this how he felt every single time I was admitted to the hospital? Taken to the ER? Rushed into those doors unable to speak with my left side slumping?

No. It had to be worse.

And now I watch him sleep and recover. Just as he has watched me do a million times. As he watches me do daily during treatment weeks and chemo weeks- which just happened to be THIS week.

Not a fan

Somehow I managed to get through treatment and getting the kids ready for their multicultural festival for Thanksgiving (the famous Kotecki pierogis HAD to be there) and the double dose of chemo and then this surgery that I swear ripped my heart from my chest.

I knew I couldn’t lose him. Ever. I just had no idea how scary it was to be on that edge. And how many times my body has put him on that edge.

I still feel like there is a 20lbs weight on my chest and we are home and he is resting. I’m in awe that this is what I have put my family through so many times with this disease of mine.

I want to wrap them all up in my arms and swear to them I am never in pain, I am never sick, I am never leaving…even if it’s all a lie to just make them exhale this weight they too must feel on their chests.

The intensity of love is a wonderful and absolutely horrifying thing. It knocks the wind out of you in the most amazing ways, and reminds you exactly where you are supposed to be, with whom, and why.

This is my place. This is his place. And I will fight like hell to keep all of us in the places we belong.



  1. What a beautiful and heartbreaking description of the “waiting”. Best wishes for a speedy recovery!!!

  2. Amen. Oh the hell that is the waiting. And then the walking out into the fresh air, and into a public space where people are driving and walking and talking and engaging in the normal everyday extraordinary beauty that is their daily lives without realising how completely fragile it is – how completely fucking fragile. How can they not know? How can you not shake them into the realisation?

    And then, you turn around and walk on, because of course you can’t shake them into the realisation – the way they are living is a blessing. And you take a deep breath and walk back into that hospital and wait some more with your loved one. How beautiful for you to know this as it is happening. Life is as tenacious as it is fragile, and I know you know this, too. Have some spoons, dear lady. Be well this Thanksgiving holiday. Peace to your family.

  3. Sorry forwhat happend to your husband hope and we pray for his fast recovery. Just be strong to him he needs you now and you will be his strenght for now.. just waiting for him..keep praying..

    we keep praying for yor family…

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