MELANCHOLY

I saw my oncologist today and was told that the tests that I took last week show that my body is totally free of cancer!!! I have had cancer since 2020, when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer. But now, there is no trace of cancer within me, nothing, nada!!! I am cured!!! I should be ecstatic. I should feel like I am on the top of the world. I should be jumping for joy!!! So why am I so melancholic? Why am I so sad? I am beside myself in my despair!!! I am happy to be cancer free, but I feel no joy from the news. I know the reason, it is that in my heart I feel that Lewis should be here. He should be sharing this good news with me. He would be thrilled!! He would be beaming!!! Smiling one of his great big smiles that would radiate his joy and thankfulness!! His eyes would show pure euphoria and love!! But he is not here. He is not with me and I feel nothing, only regret that I cannot share this miraculous moment with him!!!

It is strange, because I have been feeling this way for quite a while, sad, with melancholy even before I received the good news. I kept feeling that I am truly alone and that this feeling of total loss will never pass. I am finally starting to fully comprehend that he will not walk in through the front door ever again! So because of this, or maybe for no reason at all, since I have been home from Costa Rica this time I have been fixing up the apartment we had bought prior to our travels. We had moved in and taken off immediately. Never making it a home, just a base to come to when I needed to see doctors. And now, I feel it is time to make it a home. One that I can feel comfortable to live in. I am making all the decorative decisions, what paintings to put up, what furniture to buy, where things shall go. Until now I did not want to do this. In my head I was waiting for Lewis to return to help me make these decisions. But now, I guess I am moving on, without him.

I had always thought that Lewis and I would grow old together. Even as a young teenager I always said that I wanted nothing else but to grow old with him. I had imagined that we would live in a foreign country walking down a cobble stone street, two old amicable people in love. This I had believed to be our future, even when I was sick. I never thought that I would die. It was not a thought that I ever conceptualized. I was going to grow old with Lewis. Period, end of story. And then one day I woke up to realize that I am now older than Lewis was when he died. I caught up with him. I was never supposed to catch up with him. This was never supposed to occur. How could that have happened. It is not right!! Not right at all!! And oh, I am so sad!!

I look at old couples, the happy ones, the ones in love and I feel resentful!!! I try not to be, but I keep questioning why is that not Lewis and I? How come they got to experience 10 years, 20 years, so many more years than Lewis and I ever got to experience? Why? How did this happen? And I know there is no reason, no one to blame, but it still hurts!!!

In a couple of weeks it will be our anniversary, our 52nd anniversary, if he was alive! I will be in Taiwan and I will raise a glass of wine and tell Lewis I love him and miss him so very much!! And I will wait for the following year to do the same and every year thereafter until I will join him. Wow now that I am cancer free, that day may be further off then anticipated. So you may ask, am I happy with the Doctor’s news, well yeah I am. I do have a lot of living yet to do. But all things said and done, even good news is sometimes hard to take. I know that I will pull myself together and accept my world for what it is. I know, I will smile, laugh and love again. I accept the fact that Lewis is smiling due to his knowledge that I am cured. I just wish there was more, that he could be with me celebrating the good news, holding me and just being there as my companion, lover and best friend!!! Being the person he has always been since the first day I met him.

Life can be painful, it can be due to a loss of a loved one, medical problems or financial distress. But no matter how you feel it is life. Your alive. I am alive. It is worth fighting for. So, I shall give myself a couple of days and then dust myself off and start to live it again. I will do something fun, I will laugh with friends, I will find beauty in the world and I will take a few good deep breaths and smile!

Life is not merely surviving!!!!