1,825 Days... Plus Leap Year

It was five years ago today that we last spoke.

The two things that have stuck with me since that conversation was that you had to take your oxygen mask off to properly articulate and enunciate the fact that you needed a transplant in order to live beyond beyond the 72 or so hours you had left on this plane of existence.

The other thing was that you were surely going to die, and you simply wanted to have a regular, normal phone call, and you just wanted me to tell you about my day.

I had gone to this shopping mall near Red Rock and also drove down The Strip and had taken and was sending you pictures of the activity to show you that living in Las Vegas was about as regular as it was in Atlanta, which I had left months before. Seeing as you put me out of Atlanta and instructed me to both work on my marriage and gave me the option to tell Terry whatever I wanted at this point about your condition pointed out the fact that this was indeed the point of no return.

Hell, I was already telling Terry about every conversation, every instant message... Every report that Alesia was giving me from her hospital and home visits, seeing as you banned my ass from entering Emory because you didn't want me to see you after all of the extreme weight loss.

Whatever, Chica... I still loved you anyway and we spoke every damn day until this last conversation August 27th.

So much had happened from the time I left Atlanta until this particular conversation. Although there were times that you didn't have enough strength to speak, we spoke anyway. It hurt me as much as it made me feel important. You wanted to have conversations about everything and nothing at all... As long as it had nothing to do with medication, treatment, odd diagnoses and disease.

I understood that you wanted to be treated like a regular, normal human being. You underscored to me that although the picture mail was cool as hell, texting and instant messaging could never get the job done when it came to just being human. Those mostly short, sometime long and awkwardly paused silence, gotta make an adjustment and breathe infused conversations were my everything.

And now that I need a transplant in order to live beyond a date that I can clearly see on my calender... And am suffering through a somewhat painful, but moderately slow decline



i remember speaking with you and you having to calm me down when it was you suffering through the pain, the lack of oxygen, the poking and prodding or medical personnel, the medication adjustments and the difficulty of being back in your room at home.

You assured me that everything was going to be fine even though you knew...

and in these moments. I don't have a single solitary soul to speak with on a human level as I can clearly see for myself both my fate and mortality just as you saw for yourself

!

Seems like it was just yesterday. I wish that it was... I'd cherish the time more than I did then.