I’m sitting here with her pale hand in mine and I wonder at its frailty. I wonder how those same hands had held me so firmly, so warmly only months before. Now the still beautiful hands, because they’re her hands, hold mine ever so lightly. Her grip is weak, like her heartbeat, like her shallow breathing. Everything about her is weak now. The strongest person I ever knew, I ever loved, has been reduced to almost nothing. A mere shadow of what she was. I feel the sadness tug at me, trying to drag me back into the blackness I descended into when she first told me. I shake my head, freeing myself for the moment of that almost magnetic pull. I need to be here, in the moment. She needs me here for the last time. I owe her that, after all that she has done for me, given me, I owe her these last few moments.

“Are you crying again?”

I swallow hard, I want my voice to be strong for her. I want to counter her weakness with my strength for a change.

“No, I’ll cry afterwards.”

I said the wrong thing. Her eyes are fluttering about the room, the beeping machines, the vials upon vials of medication on the bedside table, everywhere that isn’t me. I want her to look at me, I want to remember those eyes, their warmth, their depth. She has such beautiful eyes.

“I don’t want you to cry. Not ever.”

I swallow again, pushing it all down. The fear, the blind panic at the thought of after. I have to push it away for her.

“Then I won’t.”

She finally looks at me again. The way she’s almost always looked at me, with love.

“It’s not nice to lie to someone on the day they die, you know?”

She’s actually smiling at me. She said those words that cut me to pieces and smiled at me.

“This isn’t funny! How can you say that to me…how can you…”

My chest is burning, heaving with emotion I have tried so desperately to contain. The tears and the darkness are so close now, I don’t know if I can keep it all at bay. Is it even possible to?