50

"Tomorrow will be better" my parents were always big supporters of this one-liner, during my stay in an institution, they would come and see me, they would say, "tomorrow will be better" as if; somehow; tomorrow, would ever come.

It was thirteen weeks inside and thirty visiting days and three suicide attempts to finally understand that the value of my life was much greater than i was imagining.

The day I married Alex was, and still is, the happiest day of my life, the song, the way he moved down the isle. His hair was annoying him, and the car was 3 minutes late, but he always told me that 3 was his unlucky number.

All the things in our shared condo became 'ours' they were no longer 'Jack's' or "Alex's" they were ours, and they were still ours, 5 years later, when we adopted a baby, everything was communal and it felt nice for once in my life to know that i had another person to share my thoughts and things with.

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It all changed, you know the moment when your entire world comes crashing down around you, where your feet are planted and your mind is blank, racing with nothing but empty information and useless solutions, where your heart gives way and drops into the pit of your stomach. Where you can either run, or fight.

They were just headaches, but they slowly became debilitating. "It's like someone has poured setting concrete into my skull" he would say each night. I grabbed water, two tablets and sent him off to bed.

His tests came back 3 days later with a positive reading, "You have a very low white blood cell count" it was just a general checkup and to pester the doctor about giving him stronger pain medication for his headaches, i had gone in with him to get the results because he was too scared to do so himself. "i don't want to do it alone, incase they tell me what i already know" He knew.

"He will be admitted immediately for an MRI" "The scans show a large, inoperable, melanoma growing on his pituitary gland" "The last hope is radiation therapy, even then, he can only ever have one treatment due to its position" Ok.

That's all you can say, "Ok."

The radiation didn't work.

And still, inside the doctors office, surrounded by machines, with Alex sobbing into my chest, all i could say was "Ok."

Because after a while, you learn to stop fighting it, you learn that nature is stronger than you, i learned that inside the institution, the reason i was still alive is because nature was stronger than i was.

They told me to take him home. He had asked me when i was lying next to him, at about 2 in the morning "I don't want to die here, promise me you wont let me die here" I nodded and said "Ok." He looked up at me with a lopsided smile "You seem to be saying that a lot nowadays" I nodded and smiled back at him.

I took him home 3 days later, i sat with him at every second, our son was being looked after for a while by our friends, i lied with him, day and night, until the third night when i heard his heart rate monitor slowly begin to fade, my eyes drooping from the lack of sleep, i reached over him and flicked the switch.

For the last time, I pressed my lips to his, whispering "Good night baby, your tomorrow will be better" and fell asleep beside him for a few hours.

When I woke up the body was freezing cold and had gone limp and was purpling in colour, I rang the morgue and the hospital to let them know, I rang births, deaths and marriages to let them know as well.

His body was removed from the house while I was at work, the door was shut and the bed was made neat and tidy when I came home. Just like a spare bedroom now, as i shut the door behind me, i faced the hallway, drew in a deep breath and exhale deeply, and for the last time i whispered "Ok."

Almost instantaneously everything became "Jack's" not only our shampoo and conditioner, but our house and our cars and our child. Became "Jack's"

My son went to live with his grandparents for a while, 3 years to be exact, I was back inside, but this time i knew that tomorrow would never be any better, because tomorrow never came.