A Six Month Absence

There is a story in the Bible of a warrior named Joshua who prayed for a day to not end. He begged God for the Sun to stay in the sky as long as it took for a fierce battle to be fought and won. Scholars are divided on whether this was a literal event (potentially an eclipse) or more of a metaphor, but I understand the desire to stop time, to halt the rotation of the planet for a little bit.

It was six months ago last night when the boys and I went together to Princess Margaret Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit to visit with our beloved Michael and say all the final things we wanted him to hear one last time. Earlier in the day they’d tried a maneuver to give him a little extra time, but they were careful to tell us they were offering us extra time measured in hours, not days or weeks. He was intubated, under very deep sedation, so our communication with him went only one way, but the ICU staff broke their strict rules to allow all three of us to be in the room with Michael at once. They also graciously invited us to stay past the end of visiting hours so we could use those extra hours to be with him. The tenderest of mercies in the darkest of nights.

After Michael’s bone marrow transplant last June, we were presented with a long list of instructions to make our flat safe before he could return home.

I had to get rid of my plants (which I wrote about here) because healthy soil for vegetation is bad for non-existent human immune systems, and we were instructed to find another home for our tiny poodle, Lucy Rocket. We spent a lot of time pushing back on that. Lu looks like a perpetual puppy, but she’s an old gal who has had significant health issues over the last couple of years requiring tons of gentle, precise care and attention. And we were a family who very much needed our small furry friend to bolster us through this terrible storm.

Ultimately the transplant team’s main concern was Michael coming into contact with any of her bodily fluids. Michael would have no protection from even the most benign (for the rest of us) viruses and bacteria. But because we were living in a large flat (by Hong Kong standards) where we could keep Michael and Lucy carefully separated, the doctors were okay with Lucy Rocket staying as long as we agreed to a few rules. We were already required to wash all the soft goods in the house once a week (cushions, curtains, couch cover) and all bedding down to the mattress twice a week. We needed to be extremely careful to make sure she didn’t have contact with anything Michael touched, or with Michael himself. It also meant she could no longer enter our bedroom or sleep on our bed.

This segregation of man and man’s best friend would be challenging but not impossible, as we’d already removed Michael from all care tasks for Lu after his first round of chemotherapy. And it would certainly not be as difficult as finding a new home for our sweet dog who had been part of our family in four countries for fifteen years, providing all of us with joy and calm with her peaceful presence. Even when Michael was back in the hospital post-transplant for long stretches of time, I never let Lucy Rocket back in the bedroom. I was faithful to preserve the dog-free zone so Michael could be as safe as possible. At the end when Michael was in the ICU, I remained steadfast in my adherence to the rules. As long as Michael continued to fight for his life, I would too, and in my mind letting her back in meant giving up hope of his return.

When the boys and I left the hospital, depleted and exhausted on what we now know would be the final night of Michael’s life, we returned home to wait for the worst call a person can receive.

I was despondent. I could not sleep, only lay in our painfully empty bed sobbing with my phone in my hand, dreading being summoned back. Lucy Rocket, who never makes any noise, was on the other side of the bedroom door making a high pitched whining sound I’d never heard before. She scratched at the door for a while, her own distress apparently matching my own. Even knowing the impossible odds of Michael returning to us, I still couldn’t bring myself to let her into the room. I grabbed my pillow and moved to the sofa with her where I continued to lay awake and cry. Lu pressed in hard against my neck and fell asleep while I prayed for the clock to stop. To give Michael more time to fight and win the fierce battle going on in his lungs. For the Sun to not yet rise and force us to face what was surely coming. Like all my other prayers to save Michael’s life, this too went unanswered. Six months ago around this time, my sons and I circled his hospital bed and held on to him and each other as his life slipped away from us.

I find myself once again wanting the world to stop as we mark six months since Michael was here. This month is so hard. It’s full of important dates for our family… Father’s Day, our wedding anniversary, Benjamin’s birthday, the anniversary of Michael’s miraculous bone marrow transplant which gave us six more months of life with him. This month is hard for other reasons as well, with challenges I can’t yet write about publicly. I wish we could pause to catch our breath from the relentless difficulty still hitting us from all over. I wish we could have more time to simply sit with this sorrow and honor the beautiful memories without also dodging more heaviness being thrown at us. Mostly I wish for Michael himself. To continue on day after day without him right when I really need him the most is barely tolerable.

To have enough days strung together to be able to say half a year has passed since Michael died is inconceivable. My brain still struggles with this new reality — even today I found myself grabbing my phone to text and ask him when they think he can finally come home from the hospital because I really need his help finding something I lost and he’s so good at that. Remembering he can’t help because he too has been lost to me makes the blood rush out of my head, forcing me to sit so I don’t fall. Instead of the earth stopping its rotation to give us breathing space, it feels like gravity is extra strong today. My limbs and heart are heavy. Lucy Rocket, always content to sit near but not on me, is pressed tightly against my hip softly snoring while I type this. Her ability to read our sorrow and react accordingly with calm and comfort is a supernatural gift to each of us.

Six months is simultaneously forever and no time at all. He was just here but he also left ages ago. The pain of his enormous absence is not old pain though… it is fresh every moment I think about him. And just like when my Beloved was alive, Michael is always on my mind.

More soon.