Today is a bad day. Today, It honestly looks like you have already mostly left the room – so to speak. The Doctors and Nurses are hovering and seem to just be waiting for the final decision to be made to blow the whistle and call the game. They know that I don’t want to mark a Thanksgiving holiday as the day you pass from this realm to the next, but everyone walks around like it is now a forgone conclusion. It will either by my decision or nature will make it for me, but the outcome seems destined to be the same in their eyes.

I so badly want to kick your bed over, and punch you hard. I also want to gather you in my arms and never let go. Neither are really an option.

Everyone in here has heard the stories of you. Of how we met. Of how halfway through our month long honeymoon you got homesick and asked if I would mind cutting it short so that we could go to the Browns vs Broncos game that weekend (the answer was heck NO). Of how you are labeled as “Overkill Fill” for always going above and beyond where anyone has gone before in your projects. How “Ted Head” is a real thing and everyone knows what a bad hair day should be referred to. They know you cannot sit still – probably why you require more sedation and paralytics than a standard elephant during your time here in the hospital. They know you are gentle with lots of little things, but especially little girls and bunnies. Of how you are a great skier and a ringer at cornhole. They know you are ok to travel if there is action involved and you know what the bathrooms will be like. They know that you support me in nearly anything I say I am going to try or travel to, even if it is without you. They know you are fun and know how to throw a good party and that you have built a bar with more tricks and hidden treasures than any house ever. They know you have a waterfall feature that you have built, rebuilt, tinker with each year, have colored LED lights to coordinate to music and did it all yourself. They know you have two sons whom you love more than you say to them and are so proud of the men that they are. They now you can fix almost anything, and make things that others dream about. They know you are a good guy who just ended up in the wrong news feeds and in the end, wished you had been vaccinated.

Every first year of change with us has always been a hard year for me. That first year of marriage was a struggle to be as one unit, but not lose ourselves. The first year of having a child was tough as all of a sudden we had this extra love in our life and it took attention away from each other to which we were unaccustomed to. The first year of working together was a lesson in total communication as it was fairly quickly learned that any breakdown in communication effected every hour of the day. Then the first year of not working together (eighteen years later) was also hard, as all of a sudden, we didn’t know what was happening in every moment of each others life. It was like losing half the channels on your TV all at once.

I joke about when you will be gone. I mean, our friends have all watched you digging huge holes in the garden and joked that it needs to be just a little larger as you won’t quite fit into it yet. I’ve only joked because you are healthy and I know you will be around to drive me crazy long into our old age. That is until now. I could never have pictured you this gravely ill if I had tried. It felt like things were headed in a good direction, but that seemed to be the little bit of lungs you had left trying but then getting overrun. I cannot think about what the first year without you will be like and I still pray I won’t have to know that for a long time, but it looks more and more like I’ll know sooner than later.

I stopped by the patient administrator’s office earlier to ask if she had a printer that I could print to. She did not, but asked how I was – she was the one to say you would need long term critical care after this and I’m sure she has since been informed that it will likely not be needed now. I was honest and said that I wasn’t great and this was hard. She asked if I had support to help me. I let her know that we have the best support in the world. That you have more people praying and thinking about you from all over this wide world. Love isn’t anything we are in short supply of. What we need is for your lungs to open up like the Red Sea, for air to flood your lungs like Noah’s flood.

Ted, I still want to ski with you. I still want to camp with you. I still want to cook every single meal for you. I still want you around. Please try hard.

I love you,

Sally

Ted’s stats were for shit when I arrived. His blood pressure was up, his breathing was bad, they upped his oxygen to 80%. But as the day progressed, he settled, he looked better, they replaced his breathing tube, they dropped the oxygen back to 60% and he seams better than in the morning. Here’s hoping he has an uneventful night and tomorrow is a better day. I declined to speak to the brilliant Dr today. I listened in on rounds, but really couldn’t take another talk, so I kept to my nurses today.