I wake up to Ben coughing next to me, and remember he is dying. Some days, I manage to be awake for a few minutes before remembering. Those moments are sweet, cherished. But other days, I wake up to his coughs, and any opportunity I had to forget is gone.
It's still early, but I get up anyway. Prepare his medication, put the kettle on. Look outside at the flowerbeds - meticulous - and the hedge - overgrown. The amount of stray shrubbery in our garden corresponds exactly with the amount of time that has passed since he started to die.
It's strange to live with the same person you've lived with for as long as you can remember, and know that the moment is coming where it will end. The life you've taken for granted is going to be ripped from your arms. It might be in a few weeks, it might be in a few months, but it's coming. You feel like somehow, you should be preparing for it - you have the time. Turns out it isn't time that prepares you for loss. It's other loss. I find myself going back to when my father died, and when my mother died soon after. Old heartbreaks. The loss of a beloved pet. Trying to find the key to surviving loss, knowing it's in there somewhere - after all, I'm still alive, aren't I?
And yet, this new, impending loss feels like it might be more than I can handle.
The water finishes boiling, and I pour myself a cup of tea. He coughs, again. It's getting worse, is what I would tell myself if I was ready to hear it, but I'm not so I don't.
The doctors, therapists, articles tell me to continue with my daily life as much as I can, to find some sense of normalcy and routine. Apparently, it will make things easier when it happens. I'll have something to fall back on. So every morning, I drink my tea and I do the daily puzzles on my phone. I wait for Ben to wake up, and I make us breakfast - I can't expect him to keep up his own daily routine of cooking, apparently.
Sometimes, it makes me bitter. He gets to leave and I have to stay. I shoo those thoughts away.
When I inevitably lose focus, the words on my screen becoming nothing more but a randomised pattern of 1s and 0s, I daydream about leaving. In various ways. Sometimes I think about the knife in the kitchen drawer, the quick end that would bring. Sometimes I think about the car in the driveway, the endless opportunities to run away. When I was young, I used to run away a lot. I spent two months backpacking across Europe, sleeping on benches and in random strangers' homes. That felt safer than trusting anyone to stay.
It took work to not run away from Ben. He convinced me to trust him. And now I've been betrayed, not by him, but by life itself.
I imagine what would happen to him if I left right now. I'd leave a note. Maybe I'd contact his doctor. I'm afraid she'd try to convince me to change my mind.
So maybe I'd just leave a note. Send an e-mail to my sister and a couple of friends so they'd know to look out for him, then delete everything and throw my phone in a ditch.
Not a ditch, a trash can. Phones aren't biodegradable.
Then I'd take my car and drive. Summer's coming, so I'll drive north, towards milder weather. I have some savings, so I could settle in a small town somewhere. Maybe Germany? I've always thought I should go back to Germany.
I think I would easily slip into the easy routine of building a new life somewhere. Finding a favourite café, a favourite grocery store, a favourite bookshop. Making friends with other strangers and travellers, and gradually, making my way into local circles. Slowly understanding more of the local tongue, slowly adopting it to my own, but never feeling fully comfortable in it.