The Day That Will Forever Mark Our World

The Day That Will Forever Mark Our World

“Where are you?” the nurse asked, shining a flashlight into my husband’s eyes.

“La Crosse, Wisconsin.” He winced. “The hospital.”

“And why are you here?”

“I have a brain tumor,” he said.

I turned away—eyes stinging—and stared down at the wet street, four floors below.

My husband has a brain tumor. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning he will undergo surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain—or actually this morning, for I am sitting on the cold bathroom floor in his hospital room, typing and pumping milk at 3:17 a.m.

I am at a loss to understand what I have just learned. On Christmas morning, my husband and I were post-road trip weary, eating buckwheat pancakes and drinking coffee, and now I could be a widow. At twenty-eight. With two young girls to tend and a solar-powered farm located almost six hundred miles from our immediate family.

When we were dating, I forced my husband to get a PET scan because he had two lumps on his neck. He heeded my pleas, although I’m a known hypochondriac, and my fears were unfounded. You see, I feared losing him before he was even mine. Now, that he is mine, I cannot contemplate such a loss without feeling like I am losing a part of myself.

But I fear the loss of him for our children more. He can withstand almost anything—has withstood the unknown pressure on his brain for weeks without one Tylenol for the debilitating pain—but even mentioning our girls makes my larger-than-life husband weep.

I weep as well, silently, or not so silently—mashing my face in the hospital’s towel-like bedding so I can appear strong, struggling for the right thing to say to someone who knows my words before they’re spoken, amazed that I am able to ingest air when one of my worst fears has come true.

I am honestly beyond the point of putting all of this into succinct sentences—to drum up some inspirational message behind this life-altering ordeal—and yet, I do know that I am so unbelievably grateful that I have moved to Wisconsin with my husband and therefore fulfilled one of his life-long dreams.

I am grateful we have spent eight solid weeks in our little solar-powered house—with scattered toddler toys and sawdust confetti, with electrical mishaps, a creaky windmill, and a boardless barn.

I am grateful that we have lived and worked side by side, as we have always dreamed.

These past weeks of cold, and sometimes discomfort, now warm me to the core and give me strength to get up off this bathroom tile and get ready for a day that will forever mark our world.

We covet your prayers during this difficult time.