Excerpt
Finally after six hours of searching her son arrived at the hospital carrying tears on his face and a single red rose that he had bought for his mother’s birthday. I still have that rose in perfect condition, frozen, yes frozen much like this even is in my mind and my heart. At last we were all together, tears flowed and hugs and kisses were everywhere. We all gathered around Leah’s bed and we sung her happy birthday. Still lucid, but in obvious distress she smiled and acted as if she wanted to get up and join in on the party. After the last words fell from our lips, many filed out of the room with tears and sobs. Twenty minutes later the nurse came in and asked “Another bag”?

This time…and this was the hardest thing I ever have had to do…this time I said NO, we have all had our chance to say goodbye. With that the nurse walked over and removed the drip from her arm. My heart was breaking as I gathered everyone back into the room. We all held hands as I led us in prayer. I prayed to Jesus that He would provide us all with strength and courage. I prayed that His will be done and by His grace we shall all meet again.

We all remained after the prayer and everything was silent with the exception of the machine beeping above my wife’s bed. We all watched as her respiration began to slow. Some left the room wrecked with emotion as I stood stiff and unmoving like some ancient stone giant. I had been up for thirty two hours; I had traveled a road fraught with fear. Now the road had reached its end, its end as far as this chapter was concerned. I had no idea of the journey which lay ahead, but only this moment in time. When my sweet dear wife’s reparation fell to four breathes per minute, the vile cancer that had filled her lungs with fluid began expelling itself through her mouth. I then turned to everyone and asked them to leave at once. They stood frozen in their tracks. I screamed “LEAVE NOW” for I did not want them to see their mom, daughter, grandmother and friend in anything less than the dignified woman of God she was. I did not want the last memory of Leah, my wife, my love to be this.

I was holding my wife in my arms when the nurse came into the now empty room. I asked her to get me suction over here for I did not want my wife’s final breaths to be filled with the agony of choking on this vile cancer. The nurse obliged and I then asked her to leave. She did, and all that was in the room now was me, Leah and an angel of the Lord which I could not see, but knew was there.

I held her close to my heart; I kissed her lips one last time. She gasped a little and those beautiful blue eyes that still haunt me rolled to the back of her head and she was gone…gone just like that in my arms. It was 8:10 pm on the evening of her birthday, a day that she and I should have been celebrating together in life…not mourning in her death. I then cleaned my wife up for the last time. I kissed her still warm lips. I wiped away the tears from her face, but realized that they were mine that had fallen and not hers. I covered her up and then called the nurse in and told her that my wife had gone home. We both hugged and wept together.