A Heartfelt Awakening
I woke up with a start. My heart was pounding. I felt very angry. I sat up in bed, slightly panting. I had been dreaming of one of the last times that Peter was in the hospital. The nightmare, I should call it, was very real and very true. It was a repeat of what had really happened. My poor husband was very weak. At that moment he was lying in bed in the hospital, in a state between being awake and asleep. I was terrified! He was in and out of the hospitals too often and I was in despair. That day I was sitting at his hospital bed with Matthew. We did not speak. What was there to say? We were drained. I was emotionally exhausted. The room was silent except for the various medical equipments that breathed a life of their own. It reminded one, as if one needed reminding, that one is in a hospital. We each were wrapped in our own thoughts. In the hallway outside one could hear the sound of the padded footsteps of the nurses and doctors hurrying about on their mission of healing and saving lives.
I studied my husband’s face. My precious beautiful husband, how worn he looked, how weak. His skin stretched tautly across his face like the plastic wrap we use to keep food fresh. Silently I prayed, “Please God, please don’t take him away. Please, please God save him, for I don’t know how I am to survive without him by my side.” As I thought these thoughts, hot salty tears ran unheeded down my cheeks. I felt my heart being torn to shreds at the thought of losing him. I could not bear it. I could not!
Through a haze in my tormented thoughts, I heard Matthew say, “When Dad dies, a third of the house will belong to me.”
It took me a few seconds to realize what I heard. My thoughts turned to seething anger. In a cold voice that I did not recognize as my own, I asked, “What did you just say?” He repeated what he had said. “You are waiting for your father to die?” I asked incredulously. “You are waiting for him to DIE! How could you? For your information, none of it belongs to you. The house and everything in it goes to my children. Nothing in it belongs to you. It was my home, and my children grew up there! At a time like this, how could you?” I was furious!
I guess I had raised my voice for I was livid. Peter stirred from his sleep. “What’s going on?” he asked, in a weak voice.
“Ask your son,” I replied, staring daggers at Matthew. I was lost for words.
That was more than a decade ago. I had forgotten the incident, but somehow last night, as I slept, it managed to float up to the top of my consciousness. It has made me feel agitated all day.
God listened to me that time. He did not take Peter away then. Death sneaked in a few years later and stole him away, and I feel so lost and desolated without him.