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Category:
Memoir
Publisher: Morgan James
ISBN-10: 1683501616
Type: Fiction
Pages: 334
Copyright: April 25,2017
ISBN-13: 9781683501619
Price: $8.99 (eBook)
Willow Adair lives the ultimate life until tragedy and illness threaten her model perfect facade. Willow must find the true hero within and escape the emotional abuse she endured for years. Tragic story with a purposeful ending.
Walk Beside Me is a novel about one woman's journey from a world of labels and loneliness to a far richer world of friendship, loyalty, and Christ’s redeeming love. Willow Adair has a picture-perfect life—or so it seems. When her health is compromised—a routine colon surgery goes horribly wrong, a yoga injury leads to a series of misdiagnoses ending in a full wrist fusion, and she is ultimately diagnosed with breast cancer—Willow prepares to end her life.
That's where the Angels come in. Willow’s friends are a tour de force. They paper the walls of her house with Bible verses. They pray, fearlessly and relentlessly. They lift Willow’s spirits when she is sad and weep when she is hurting. They walk beside her quite literally, on sidewalks from Columbus to Miami, and they walk beside her spiritually and emotionally, soothing her heartache, healing her self-esteem, and reminding her that every single minute of her life is abundantly worth living.
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Excerpt
It was a warm day in September when I decided to kill myself.
I stood in the parking lot outside the doctor’s office. I had just seen the specialist, but I would have to wait four endless days for that fateful phone call. Why did they always do these sorts of life-altering tests before a weekend? I feared the worst.
In my left hand I held my car keys far too tightly, the sharp metal ridges digging deep grooves into my fingers. But I couldn’t feel anything. In those first moments, all I felt was fear and disbelief. The anger would come soon enough.
“Willow,” said Oliver, my husband. “Willow, listen to me. You’re going to be all right.”
I didn’t hear him. I had started to scream.
I was literally screaming in broad daylight, leaning against our car, as if the car itself would support my weight. I felt sharp, guttural pain, as if something was tearing me apart from the inside. And now it was only going to get worse. The diagnosis wouldn’t come for four days but I already knew it in the marrow of my bones: the worst was coming true.
I couldn’t wrap my brain around having to undergo more suffering. I had spent the last three years in constant pain, every single day. Was I being punished? Was everything I had gone through not enough? I screamed and screamed and screamed some more, unable to grasp what was happening to me.
Not me, I cried. Not me.
“Stop screaming, Willow,” said Oliver, gently taking the car keys out of my hand. “Let’s get you home.” He seemed a bit irritated. How could he be so cold? He must have seen that question in my eyes because he tried to hug me.
I ignored him and climbed into the passenger’s seat.
I stared out the window the entire ride home, crying softly. Sunlight shone through the tall, stately trees of Bexley, the affluent suburb of Columbus where we lived. It was a beautiful crisp fall day. Kids were outside playing in jeans and T-shirts. The weather had not yet turned.
But inside the car, I had broken out into a cold sweat. I felt sick. It seemed cruelly unfair to see families outside, enjoying the pleasant weather, leading lives so happy and carefree when my own life had become a living nightmare. I looked down at my arm and let out a guttural whimper.
The tears kept flowing. All the emotional courage I had mustered over the last few years went up in flames and crumbled into ash. This couldn’t happen to me—and yet, it was happening.
Hadn’t I suffered enough? Hadn’t my family suffered enough? My daughter Isabella and son Wiles, fourteen and eleven at the time, had suffered. So had my husband.
I looked at Oliver now, staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel. He said nothing. I desperately needed comfort—a kind word, a reassuring touch—but he had none to give. He was fighting his own demons, tethered to a wife who had been in constant pain for the last three years. When he took his wedding vows, I’m sure he hadn’t imagined “in sickness and in health” to be quite so literal.
And then, I had the thought. It came as a shining epiphany, hitting me like a bolt of lightning. If I end my life, I thought, my husband and children won’t have to suffer anymore.
I loved Bella and Wiles more than life itself. I was their mother and I wanted to protect them, not cause them pain. Being a mother was all I’d ever really wanted to do, and I wanted to love them, not put fear in their tender souls. I wanted to be a good mom, not a woman needing constant care and help from others.
But I had failed miserably. And it was about to get so much worse.
I wanted to scream and yell and run and hide. The pain was excruciating, both physically and mentally. I didn’t think I could bear it. Generally speaking I wasn’t a “worst-case scenario” person, but then my whole life had become a worst-case scenario the last few years. I didn’t have the diagnosis yet, but I knew what was coming, even then.
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