I Loved My Husband. All I Wanted to Do Was Care for Him.

Edna looked after Harold until he took his final breath.

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Heads up: This is a big divergence from past works of fiction. I feel like I should add a trigger warning, but honestly, I’m not exactly sure what the trigger would be for. So I’ll just say, read at your own risk.

Illustration by Jason Leviere (@mister_dashing)

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The first time Harold got sick, really sick, was the first time I saw him cry. We were at the hospital, and he was on his seventh round of chemo. His hair had fallen out. His body was shaky with tremors. He couldn’t even hold his Kindle to read, not that he could have kept his eyes open.

“I need you,” he said. “Don’t leave me.”

In our forty-three years of marriage, he had never said those words. I lay in the cot beside him, holding him, as tears streamed down his face. He was blubbering like a toddler who’d fallen and scraped his knee. He was desperate for my care, and I was desperate to care for him.

Neither of us thought his cancer would go into remission. Harold was so pessimistic that he initially refused the bone marrow transplant. He just wanted to die, but I convinced him. “Thirty percent chance of success is significant. It’s worth attempting.”

I pleaded, implored, begged, and eventually, he acquiesced. The month in the hospital after the transplant was the best month of my life. I slept on a chair beside him every night. I spoon-fed him applesauce when he had the strength to eat. I monitored his IVs. Slowly, he came to life until he was eventually discharged.

They say a near-death experience changes a man, and Harold didn’t just have a momentary near-death experience. He wasn’t in a car crash where the second before collision, his life flashed before your eyes. He had three months of consistently knocking on death’s door. He had three months of needing and appreciating me.

But once his health was fully restored, Harold reverted to his old self. I knew he wasn’t the type of man to have a new lease of life following cancer. I didn’t expect him to start hiking or to take up yoga. But I still expected to see some changes, however small. Perhaps he’d start to tip waiters more than fifteen percent (before tax).

But it was like the whole thing never happened. Whenever I tried to bring up the big C or our time together in the hospital, he would cut me off: “I don’t wanna think about it.”

He was cold and emotionless. I was shut out again. No longer needed. No longer loved. The whiplash shook me to my core. I cried in the shower nearly every day. Wailing. Harold must have heard, but he never checked on me—not once.

I couldn’t go back to our old life. It’s so much worse to have something and have it taken away than to never have it all. If Harold never had cancer, I think I would have continued being miserable without any attempt to change my fate because I didn’t think change was possible. But now I knew what our lives could be, and I had to get that life back, no matter the cost.

I’m lucky Harold never took an interest in my hobbies. He never asked what I was planting in our garden or commented on how ripe my tomatoes were. Not once did he ask where I was going when I left our home. Usually, I was a half-mile down, where there were open backwoods. One afternoon, while going on my walk, I found a cluster of False Morels.

Their caps looked bizarre and lobed-shaped, sort of like a crumpled paper bag. I used a dollar bill in my wallet to pick them up, avoiding direct contact with my skin, and placed them in my basket. I didn’t know then my intent, or at least, that’s what I told myself. If I didn’t know, why else would I have picked them?

That evening, as Harold and I sat across from one another reading, I made him tea as I did most nights. I expected him to comment on the taste, complaining it was bitter or acidic—something—but he did not. He drank it down. Three hours later, he woke in the middle of the night nauseous. He ran to the bathroom, unsure which side it would come out. (It turned out the answer was both). He grabbed the sides of his stomach while he moaned in pain.

I was by his side again. It wasn’t as romantic as in the hospital, but I was again needed. I gave him water. I placed a cool washcloth on his forehead. I wiped the puke off his chest.

“Thank you,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough.” But his thanks was enough.

By the middle of the next day, he was fully recovered—back to his old self. And so I fixed him a tea again, this time, with fewer caps. Again, he got sick. Again, he needed me. It took me a week to find the correct dosing. Enough that he would fall ill for an extended period of time but with less diarrhea. Vomit, I could handle. But the smell of his stool I could not.

I was lucky he didn’t want to see a doctor. After his last hospitalization, he never wanted to set foot in another hospital again. I begged him to go a few times—enough not to rouse suspicion. But he insisted, and I told him I’d respect his wishes.

“Besides, I don’t need doctors. All I need is you,” he said.

For a month straight, I was living in paradise. I was appreciated, needed, and loved. On Friday, I wouldn’t add any mushrooms to his tea. Come Saturday, he felt better and was so grateful for my care that he made love to me. We kissed with a passion we hadn’t had since we started dating decades ago. We had long sex sessions. We were connected. We were in love. We were happy.

The last time we made love, Harold gave an additional layer of tenderness as if he knew this was his final goodbye.

I was reading in the den when I heard Harold from the other room. “Come here, Honey!” He started calling me Honey while in the hospital. He stopped when we got home but resumed once he started getting sick again.

Upon entering our bedroom, my mouth dropped to the floor. Harold had laid a path of rose petals to our bed. A dozen candles were lit. A bottle of champagne was chilled in a bucket. Percy Sledge was playing—When a Man Loves a Woman. He must have set this all up when I was out that afternoon, foraging for mushrooms.

I started to cry. I don’t know why, exactly. My heart just felt so full—it was overflowing, coming out of me in the form of tears.

The corners of Harold’s lips turned downward. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he said, running over and wrapping his arms around me in a loving embrace.

I took a few deep breaths and stopped my tears. “Nothing,” I said. “I love you. It’s perfect.”

“No,” he replied. “You’re perfect. I couldn’t live without you.”

Then, he shed a tear—the second time I had ever seen him cry. Now, it was unclear who was holding who. We were both lifting each other, supporting one another. It was beautiful. It was, indeed, perfect.

He then swooped me in his arms. This seventy-year-old man who’d spent the last month predominantly an invalid somehow had the strength to carry me. And I’m not a petite woman. I think the power of love gave him the strength.

Carefully, he dropped me down on the mattress and straddled me, his hip cracking. I was wearing a shift, this little nightgown. He looked me in the eyes as he slowly removed the strap. His eyes had grown dull since chemo, like a light behind his eyeballs had gone out. But looking at me, the light was back. His eyes were vibrant, so green, like the moss I see out in the woods.

“I love you,” he said before kissing my exposed clavicle. His kisses were slow and purposeful. He was relishing my body, my skin, every part of me. He kissed up my neck, his mustache tickling me slightly, but I didn’t giggle or laugh. I didn’t want to do anything that could ruin the moment.

He sucked on my earlobe gently before kissing my cheeks. By the time his mouth graced my lips, I was soaked. I hadn’t been this wet since Carter was in office. I grabbed his callused hand and placed it on my most delicate flower.

“Slip a finger in,” I said.

“Holy shit, Edna.” I loved it when he said my name. Not just in the bedroom but outside. “You are drenched.”

“It’s all because of you,” I said.

I leaned forward, grabbing the bottom of my shift and pulling it over my head. Meanwhile, Harold stripped down. He must have taken a Cialis because he hadn’t been that hard since the Nixon administration. I ran my nails down the sides of his stomach, scratching him lightly until I wrapped my hand around the base of his penis. I knew it had only been a week since the last time we made love, but I forgot how big he was, every damn time. It always took me two hands to stroke him. But tonight, I wasn’t going to stroke him. Tonight, I would give him a blowjob (which I hadn’t done since H. W. Bush).