The End

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning. ”― Louis L'Amour

The End.

It felt like the end. The days blended to nights and the nights into weeks. Eventually, I lost track. I would just lay there. Suffocating. My only focus, to breathe in and then to breathe out. One breath at a time. Each breath carrying me from one moment to the next.

It is a mantra I find myself revisiting over and over again in life. When all else fails and you can do no more, one breath. That is all you have to do to get from one moment to the next. To keep going, to literally live one more moment. Until time has healed, until the storm has passed. I would lay there in my bed and take one more breath. Then another. Then another. My lungs crushing under the weight of an invisible cloud. A shadow of sickness that had fallen over me. I lay there, breathing, willing my lungs to expand and feed my body the air it so desperately needed to be. When the pressure and thickness of the air was too much, I would drag myself to the patio and lay on the cool cement, sleeping in the icy night air. The crisp of its coolness cutting the density of the atmosphere and diluting it to a consistency I could swallow.

It was actually my heart that was failing. My heart was pounding so hard I could see it, bringing life to the saying "pounding out of your chest." Pulsing, frenzied and convulsing trying to keep up. To keep going. Expanding and flailing, erratically trying to maintain a flow. Maintain life. To hold pressure. To feed my body what it needed to survive. But my rhythm was off.

I lay there, alone, in the darkness of that disease. But I wasn't alone. Even in the cloudiness of my consciousness, I could feel two figures watching over me. Willing me to breathe. Watching me with worry. It was with them I shared these breaths. The pressure mounting and my fight fading. Then, in a single breath, the curse was lifted. I remember wondering if someone had opened a window. A gale of cold air sweeping into my lungs like the first air you breathe as you break the waters surface. An invisible sword striking the clouds and in an instant clearing the storm. The damage was extensive but the storm had passed and like the passing of so many other storms, so began the next chapter. One of cleanup, recovery and healing.