All I Need

This is the third time washing his sheets within the last couple days.

This is the third time today I hear him cry silently, asking me to just leave him rot. Saying I 'deserve a happy life with some other man'. A happy life with another that could give me the thing I've always wanted.

Children.

Of course I always tell him to hush as I assist him to the other bedroom.

The spare bedroom that was supposed to be for our child.

The perfect child I imagined us having.

Slowly, I help him slide onto the smaller twin bed with plain white sheets. He moans and groans as his fatigued and aching body moves subtly to get in a somewhat comfortable position.

Just as I am about to leave to wash the sheets once again, his large yet now quite frail hand finds mine sending me back to the time when I had first left him; him telling me that we didn't need children while I still mourned our non existent child as if I had miscarried.

"I'm so sorry. I never wanted any of this for you." His apology is soft, so soft that I feel the tears stinging my eyes to be let free. I wipe them with my free hand as quickly as they spring loose.

"Get some rest, and I'll bring up some soup for you later." I feel a bit heartless for not fully accepting his apology, but I know he knows why it's hard for me to forgive.

I grew up having a father who left my mother and I for another woman, my first love only using me for money, and being kicked out of my friend group for not partaking in the wild party antics during my college years.

My forgiveness had dwindled down to almost being non existent, and is one of the reasons why I still can't forgive him or myself for not being able to have the family we've always wanted.

The painful memories of the day we found out he was infertile rush back as I walk into the master bedroom to retrieve the sheets and wash them.

He had looked so painstricken while I had wept in his arms, heartbroken.

My heart had become so broken that I lashed out. I became angry. So incredibly angry, that I brought it up to him every chance I could. I wanted him to feel my pain, my suffering; everything.

Little did I realize that he was going through heartache of his own.

When I left him, I hadn't realized how much pain, mentally and physically, he was in.

When he called me just a few days ago that he could no longer support himself and was instructed by his oncologist to stay in bed, I felt my hardened heart soften in pity.

The months I was away from him, he was trying to mend himself, but it only got worse as the non cancerous tumors within the linings of his colon turned deadly and he went from having a high risk of colorectal cancer to being at stage four of it; the worst stage.

His doctor had him going to chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatments, but with all his added stress, the cancer progressed into his liver and his body began shutting down.

He has been given only days to weeks to live.

The first night upon hearing this, I rushed to head straight for his place, bawling so hard that I nearly swerved into the oncoming traffic.

Although we had separated for almost a year, my love for him has never dissipated. I don't think it could ever.

"Darling." I could hear his faint voice call for me up the stairs, so after starting up the load of wash, I made my way back up to the spare bedroom where he was laying with his eyes closed. As if knowing I was there, he pointed to the closet door.