Last Days

I had two days to live.  HIV-positive and succumbing to a normally benign bacterial strain, I was pretty pissed at my immune system.  Not only that, but my sister also had only two days to live because of a sudden, but equally as deadly, onset of cancer... and that knowledge alone made me gasp in pure agony.  I was responsible for telling our parents.  All that was going through my mind was that I didn't want them to feel any pain, however inevitable it would be.

My family gathered around the porch table surrounded by greenery.  My sister decided to break the news to mom in the library, leaving me alone with dad.  I could feel actual tears falling as I struggled to find a way to tell him that in two days he would no longer have a son or a daughter... I could not even look him in the eye, finding myself a blithering idiot and choking back heart-wrenching sobs on his behalf.

Flashback to the day before: winning a go-kart race in Guatemala for the White House staff, the smell of burnt rubber still in the air, ecstatic at the thrill and giddy from the rush of adrenaline... not even minding that underneath everyone's exuberant smiles and hearty cheers I could see my companions on the verge of crumbling into grief and preparing to face their own mortality.

Flashback to three days prior, being promoted to be the President's aide, responsible for things such as sitting pretty at conferences and fielding unimportant questions, filling my days with snarky commentary on politicians and socializing.  Not too shabby a way to spend the last few days on earth, I remember thinking.

I got married the next day.  I do not know which poor soul found themselves chained to my last dying affections, bittersweet and beautiful as they would be.  Even knowing their hardship, I found myself at a beach wedding.  Glimmering brown eyes looked down the aisle at me and held the sun-drenched tableau of my grinning face, surrounded by friends and family, hands clasped all together in a moment of perfection for what seemed like an eternity.

With staggering sadness, I knew I would never feel this loved again.

...

I woke up alone and overwhelmed

Photo Credits: HIV Virus, Go-Kart, Beach Wedding