Today I sat in a sterile room, staring at the glow of a screen, waiting for answers. The scan didn’t show the same alarming growth as before. There were things there, yes, but not the kind that immediately demanded removal. Still, I asked for a biopsy. I needed certainty.
Afterwards, I found myself asking the registrar questions most people don’t want to say out loud. If the biopsy is positive and I choose not to go through another surgery, what then? What does life expectancy look like? Would it be painful if nothing more was done?
Those questions hung in the air, heavy and sharp. They weren’t easy to ask, but they mattered.
I realised in that moment something about myself: I don’t shy away from truth. Even when it’s raw, even when it hurts, I want it laid bare in front of me. Knowledge steadies me, gives me ground under my feet. Yet in that same space, I saw my shadow. The need for answers is also fear disguised. The fear of being wrong, fear of carrying regret, and fear of making the wrong call for someone who cannot choose for themselves.
There is a coldness in this role too. Talking about life and pain as if they were numbers on a page. Sometimes, I wonder if my pursuit of clarity strips away tenderness, makes me sound more like a decision-maker than a wife. But then I remember: both are true. I am the one who has to ask the hard questions, and I am the one who will lie awake at night replaying them.
This is love in its most complex form. It is both fierce and fragile at once. Love that doesn’t always mean fighting for more time, but choosing peace, dignity, and comfort. Love that walks into the hard questions because avoiding them would be easier, but far less kind.
In the end, I can’t control the story’s ending. All I can do is walk through it with honesty and love, even when love feels cruel.
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