The Last Breath

Ten years I traveled this unwilling journey, this sorrowful mystery with my husband, like the decade of a rosary, each bead forming a tear that washed his soul with my prayers. The wooden beads were my everyday cross, a string of tomorrows with the ending fixed. And my husband, ill to the bone, pretended to be well, still clasped in the dance of life. How do you pluck from your eyes the deterioration from what he once was? You go on because love is profound; it sees with the soul and not with the eyes. Each day, each hour, each minute, I made an attempt to provide kindness, comfort, and joy, a ministry nourished in pure love that had no effect on the body that was determined to waste away. Every inexorable hour and sleepless night remained the same. And my husband, the man who brought me strength and joy, lay like an injured bird with a broken wing still trying to fly. In his final days, when his speech was gone and sleep was constant, my Hail Mary’s covered him with a kaleidoscope of memories shared, kisses, and words of love to fill his emaciated body to capacity so he would know my overflowing heart. In the hush that followed, I heard with extraordinary acuteness the softest breath of a whisper, a special grace for me, the faintest most powerfully resonating words from his lips to my heart: “I love you.” I relive that moment forever timeless in my heart. And on the following morning when the time had finally come, struck by sorrow, I watched the final breath expire and empty out the life I knew, leaving a shell of a body to be held one last time in my final Amen.