Why Doesn't She Listen?

I watched as my best friend fought the cancer. She lay on the hospital bed, needles, a sick tray and tubes in her nose, around her face—twisting her into this machine-like thing. Her hair was given to Locks of Love. But I wanted my best friend to be her gorgeous, redhead self. It was so soft and sometimes even shiny, like a penny.

Because she was my redhead.

And, one day, had become my wife.

However, Silver passed away. Her stomach saying no to the medicine, she vomited right onto the apron that had enrobed her for four years.

She is now in the ground, a tombstone before her.

Silver.

No date. No little story about her. Just her name.

First name.

First of all, she was stronger than any woman I’ve ever met, known or didn’t know. Second, that nurse had told Silver the medicine would bring her to the edge of being cured. She hadn’t known the future. The poor nurse freaked out when she had hurled chunks—

Never mind, it’s too gross. And my precious Silver wouldn’t want me remembering. Anyway, she was a woman bent on getting better. She took all her medicine, went through chemotherapy like a trooper, rather trusted the Lord to save her should that be His will and waited for me to come home every afternoon, laughing at my funny work stories and reminiscing about our childhood together.

Her eyes always sparkled.

I just want to touch those gorgeous locks. That model hair.

Not anymore.

Silver is gone. In heaven. At least I’ll see her after I die.

But I’m only ten years from sixty.

It’s not like I’ll ever die in an accident or on purpose.

Sometimes, lying in bed at night is the only thing I can do without running away. I don’t want to be a man without a woman. Without a wife.

I remember thinking: without a fiancé. Without a wedding to look forward to.

But Silver failed at her dream of overcoming this stupid cancer. She had died. She had failed on her quest to getting better. Please, understand. I don’t mean to be a burden, but if you could just try to empathize. Or sympathize.

You give me the strength to cope with this loss, right? Please...

Silver was always a good girl. Sure, she had stolen a dollar from the Dollar General in fifth grade, and lied to her father about where she had been that day she had stolen a peach from Walmart down the road. But she received salvation, returned that peach and dollar and humbly promised her father she’d accept any consequences for doing so. He told her to give him a dollar, and she had done so. He also told her he had completed her dollhouse, but when she went from excitement to tears, she had realized that should one person be dishonest, another would respond in kind.

She nodded, saying she understood, honesty the best policy from then on.

Silver always had dreams. She wanted to outskate the best of them in the Olympics, and did a stint teaching the sport for a while, one of her students going on to become a national Olympic ice skater, gold almost every time. When a new teacher came around, boasting she could do better than Silver, Silver taught her, her poisonous attitude as nasty as that of a rattlesnake. But Silver agreed to compromise—how about the teacher simply teach the best she could, and Silver teach her ways, too?

The teacher would blame her, frame her and outright insult her.

After this woman was fired, Silver continued to teach, becoming a great teacher. After receiving some awards and recognition for her teaching skills and even going onto the Hollywood red carpet with the Olympic student, her dreams were dashed when she realized a lump on her breast a few weeks after all the fame craze. I rushed into the bathroom, asking whether she was okay.

“I think I need to see a doctor, Rome.”

I rushed to the doctor’s that night, he running some tests. Cancer, he said. I stood there, dumbfounded. I wanted to scream, to wake up from this hideous reality. I forced myself to ask him. He repeated himself, shook his head and left. I looked over at Silver. She was blinking back tears.

“Oh, Rome!”

I grabbed her into a hug as she sat there in the room on the bed. We embraced a long time. Then we left. The next night, she was taking a shower. All her hair had come out, and she told me she was losing it—her beauty. The next day, she was bald—her head hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, armpits, arms and legs were all bald. No hair. No red-orange beauty. Nothing but skin. Tan skin. I rubbed her head, kissed it but nothing I did or what she said helped me accept the fact that she had lost her hair.

She was no longer the beautiful woman I wrapped up in a hug, lovingly staring at as she combed her soft head. She was now a cancer patient, this disgusting monster of a sickness having stolen her good looks and good features.

It stole my Silver. My only Silver.

She couldn’t teach. One day, she was so sick from the cancer her new home was the hospital. The freaking hospital. I didn’t get it. Friends consoled me, but I drove to the hospital over and over, every night, every weekend. Every day after work. My days turned into months, and months turned into years. Sometimes, I couldn’t sleep. I had to spend the night at the hospital. I had to be with her, hair or no hair.

She was my wife. I was never not with her. I skipped birthday parties. When she could walk out of the hospital either on remission or because she just needed some fresh air and a break from the nurses’ constant reminders to go back to sleep and dream dreams of the sunshine brightening up her face, I took her to the park. I took her to the beach. I took her everywhere.

I was with her, no matter what.

“Silver?”

I looked over at the hospital bed, where Silver had lay all those times ago.

“Yes?” She said.

I sat down in a chair across from her.

“Could we take a walk in the park?”

“Sure—if Doctor Bens allows us. I hope we’re going to get better!”

Silver laughs, Dr. Bens arriving, asking how his favorite patient was doing. A bright smile is an understatement. She’s joking around, never sighing or spewing ugly words or vomiting frustration or disgust. Silver was always ready to greet visitors, relaxing when she got tired, sleeping peacefully at night and discussing her hopes and desires to build a treehouse when she got better. If Silver got better. She never lashed out, complained or mumbled darkly under her breath. Silver never gave anyone the silent treatment, ignored anyone or instigated a fight. Cancer, she said, was just something that came and went.

I shook my head at the joy Silver radiated like the sun radiated heat. She couldn’t stop exclaiming how glad she was to have a husband who was always by her side. Silver said she was so blessed to be the wife of a man who never left her. Just like her Jesus never gave up on her. He never abandoned her, always, as she said, holding her in His loving arms.

I wished I had the same contagious enthusiasm as Silver. She was, as I said, spiritually ambitious. She always talked about how she was going to get better, but if she didn’t, that was okay. Christ was going to bring her home. She couldn’t wait, she said. Heaven was better than this earth. This place with cancer taking over people’s bodies to the point where they died. Cancer was a murderer. It killed people. It festered until its victim lost the battle. The war inside.

I couldn’t bring myself to just imagine her being here. I wanted her here with me.

Did I do something wrong? Worry consumed me. What did I do to deserve Silver’s death? Her lack of ability to move gracefully on the ice? Her ability to teach? Her ability to go to Hollywood to be with her best star pupil? Her ability to live with me at home? The best friend in my life—of my life—taken from me? What? Was I the reason?

Sometimes, Rome, things happen for a reason. The Lord spoke to me.

I didn’t want to hear that Silver was taken. I knew she wasn’t sick anymore. But I wanted to be with her. She was too precious to me.

“Rome?”

I blinked and rubbed my face. Silver coughed, a deep, hard one that shook me as well. When she coughed, it was like an earthquake. She shook, her frail body attacked by something ugly. Sometimes, she winced, her throat sore. I went over and checked it—redness glowered back at me.

“Am I okay?” She asked, reacting to the pain of the sore throat.

“I’m here.” Was all I could manage.

“Are we going to get married?” She put her hands in mine as I reached out to her. I whispered in her ear.

“We are. We will stand on that altar together, vowing to never leave each other, no matter what. I promise you, Sil. We’ll be together, Silver and Rome.”

“You promise?”

“Yes! Yes—”

“Yes, honey?”

I jerked back to reality.

“Stop dreaming. You’re always spacing out. Let’s just enjoy the nice fire over there.”

I looked over at the wall behind the couch I used as a bed on weekends. Poor Silver! She wanted a roaring fire so badly. I asked whether the hospital could build fireplaces. A nurse coming into the room, holding a tray of medicine and juice, said no. “It’s a violation to our laws. We’d get sued, and Silver here wouldn’t get her treatment.”

Like I care. I rolled my eyes. All I want is to snuggle with her. I shouldn’t see her like this! This half-dead creature—no hair, nothing to eat but medicine, canned meat and juice boxes. Why me?

For years, my daily pity parties didn’t wipe the cancer away. As the nurse tended to a nodding Silver, her blue eyes sparkled. I saw laughter in them. I saw joy. I asked my love why she thought she had cancer. She said she wasn’t supposed to know. She just laughed at my funny stories from work, trusting in the Lord to save her from this monster that consumed her body, sucking away her life one second at a time.

I wanted to take her place. I wanted to be in that hospital bed, taking that putrid medicine, feeling those needles pierce my skin and wear a bandana every time I went outside to get some sun. I was watching her fight this cancer. Do everything in her power to make it through. Battle such a disease. So far, she was doing well. My hopes were up.

“But,” she said, as if she could read my mind. “You hate when I cough, vomit, lose weight or feel my bald head and face. You can’t stand it. You leave, fists clenched, teeth clenched and mind swirling with stormy thoughts and eyes hard and dark with anger.

“Seems to me that you’re always happy when I’m not puking my brains out, but you’re not ambitious enough to be joyful as I am.”

“Yeah, well, this cancer…”

I got up off my chair, pacing the checkered floor. “Everyone at work’s talking about the campfires, the Fourth of July parades, the things they’re doing with their wives. They’re having a blast, even!” I jabbed at Silver—rather the cancer—when she asked whether I was angry with her. “I’m sitting here, watching my wife die of cancer. We’ve only—”

“You think complaining’s stopping the cancer, Rome?”

“No.”

“You love when we see each other.”

“Yes…”

“You admire the way my eyes shine when I talk to the nurses. You know where I’m going when I die. I want you to have hope, too. I want you to be ambitious—determined to be happy regardless of what happens. What would you want me do—lose sleep over your cancer, or smile through the pain? What would sound better? I tire, Rome, of your anguish. I’m sick of seeing you always upset whenever you’re here. At least you visit me, sleep over and help me. I’m not dying—yet. I have strength. Think of the times we went to the park. Think of all those times we went to the beach!”

“Yeah…” I could hear a little hardness to Silver’s voice, like I knew she was growing annoyed with my lack of joy. My lack of acceptance towards carrying myself through the pain. In other words, I lacked the maturity Silver owned.

“So accept it. Stop wishing you were someone else. Because we’ll be doing those things—”

She coughed, sounding like she was about to throw up. I grabbed the tray just as she vomited chunks into the grey bowl. She heaved, and I almost retched myself. But ten seconds later, she wiped her mouth, and I gave her a water bottle. Swishing it in her mouth, she motioned for another bucket as I put the vomit-covered bowl on the ground and snatched the bucket for her to spit.

“Geez, slowpoke! Hurry up.” She laughed afterwards, me wearing a cold smile as I rubbed her bald head, her bald face and bald arms and legs. I sat next to her. After taking care of the sick, a nurse said she’d be back in to tell us whether Silver could go home. Silver wanted me to know I didn’t have to give up if she failed. I didn’t have to live this depressed life. I didn’t have to succumb to the temptation of suicide or even loneliness. I could move on.

The nurse said she’d be happy to let us know Silver was in remission! Partial remission, but remission nonetheless. I was so elated I actually grabbed Silver into a tight hug, and she almost passed out. Letting her go, I pumped both fists in the air. The nurse chuckled, a huge smile on her face, and she clapped.

Some other doctors apparently heard the celebrations because they entered with chatter and high-fives. I went on and on about what Silver and I would do. As soon as we were back home, I lit a fire, grabbed some marsh mellows and sticks, and we had ourselves a little date night. She smiled weakly. I asked her whether she was okay.

“I’d feel better if you trusted when I had cancer. You’re all excited when I have cancer-free days but mad when I’m suffering. Be joyful nonetheless.”

The stick dropped out of my hand. I forgot the fire, the mellows and the graham crackers. The chocolate sat there untouched. Then, “You’re right, Silver.” I put a soft hand on her shoulder. She nodded, knowing I may not be true.

When we returned to the hospital, Silver and I held hands as much as possible. The nurses and doctors all said she only had two weeks to live. I nodded, but I didn’t complain. I didn’t slam my fists down on the metal railing, didn’t scream any amoral words and didn’t go home wanting to wake up from this despicable dream. I continued to smile through it all. Silver even said she saw a sparkle in my eye.

“But don’t do it for me.” She said.

Over the next few days, I had deep conversations with Jesus. I read the Bible, sensing His presence. I even dreamt Silver and I was walking on pure gold like glass, transparent. When I woke up, I told her, but she was asleep. The bad news nurses brought me, the times Silver threw up, the times she coughed and got so tired she slept half the day all made me nod, but I didn’t ball my fists or pace the room. Silver didn’t stop me from expressing my gratitude.

She just sat there, drinking it all in.

When the nurses came in to announce she only had hours to live, I nodded, tears in my eyes. When she sighed, closing her eyes, I lay beside her, a little tight but still with her. Being beside my love was all I could want. Cancer or no cancer, Silver was my wife for life. Cancer or no cancer, she and I were going to be together forever.

I went home one day, just to get away from the stress. The vomiting was making me sick. I called a friend. He encouraged me. I felt better. I went to the store, buying some ice cream. Raising my spoon, I said, “Here’s to us!” I pictured Silver raising her spoon of ice cream, nodding. She was always agreeing, always ready to tackle and beat out the next challenge.

Ambition was her middle name.

“Silver?”

“Yes, Rome?”

“Sorry for complaining. Do you forgive me?”

She hugged me tight. “Yes, I do!”

That night, she passed away.

Twenty years later, I had contracted a rare cancer. My eyes sparkled, my mouth filled with laughter and I joked with the doctors and nurses—the same ones! My baldness didn’t stop me from hugging people and thanking those who gave me gifts and cards. I passed away, a joyful man.

We weren’t a couple anymore, as we walked the streets of gold.

She wasn’t the only one who exuded joy—my eyes sparkled, too.

And I told more stories about Silver’s and my togetherness than from work.