Grateful for the pain

As you may have noticed, I've fallen off the 365-day-blog-challenge wagon. With good reason. Just over a week ago my husband, the love of my life, the thorn in my side, the man who challenges me to be better every day, who believes I already am better, the man who makes me laugh and sigh, that man, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Just typing that hurts.

If you want to know more about his illness you can check out his caringbridge page. I don't want to recount it here. Go ahead. I'll be waiting when you get back.

In the last week we have spent most of our time in the hospital, where they are poking, prodding, determining, diagnosing, arguing and trying to understand what's happening to him. He has been in so much pain he cannot walk and is moaning aloud. Through all of this I have been only able to hold his hand or rub his back or tell him I love him. Over and over again.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Because there is nothing else I can really say.

I have never cried so hard as I have this week, though I expect I will have lessons in crying harder. I cannot bear to imagine what he will have to go through, what is to come, yet it is all I can think about.

Through it all, there is a peculiar kind of grace emerging, one I never wanted but recognize. I am so angry this is happening to him. And I am so grateful that I am here with him. I have never hurt like this - and I know my pain is nothing compared to his - but even this much emotional pain is exceeded by love. By the love I feel for him. By the love I feel for my friends and family. By the love I see wrapping around him with every text message, every phone call, every moment spent reading by his bedside, every act of kindness. I would not see it so easily were it not for the magnitude of the pain.

I'm in no way talking about physical pain. What my beloved is experiencing in his body is awful and bears no gift. But the very rawness of this time allows us to see what we miss in everyday life. The grace. The small moments of kindness that make life manageable, if not always bearable. The love. Always the love.

(c)2014 Laura S. Packer