Choosing to Live

Choosing to Live 

I wanted to die in December. I felt the strings that bound me to this world thin. Pain wracked my body. Sorrow shook me to the core.  The silent killer, colon cancer, had wreaked havoc on my innards.  My colon was perforated and there was a hot mess inside. It pulsed in agony by the time I was diagnosed and admitted to the hospital.

For fourteen days I lay in a hospital bed looking out at the world through hollow eyes. I saw, but I truly couldn't fathom. Time slipped by. Three hundred and thirty six hours seemed to slip away with little to no effort.

My brother and sister-in-law tried to pull me back. They were verbal and angry, refusing to leave my side. They tried so hard.  Each visit was an attempt to bring me back to the world of the living.  They walked in with flowers one day, a Christmas tree the next, jokes, lottery tickets, a book, and movies. Nothing worked.

Then one day they showed up with a journal and a pen. They put it under my right hand and said, "Write!"

Now this may not have worked for most people, but the pen went back to a time when I was a baby in Italy, surrounded with family, having cut my first tooth. In the Armenian culture, when a baby cuts his or her first tooth, a celebration ensues.  They call it "Atam Hatik," and it's a prophetic gathering filled with chanting and good will, and ending with a scattering of whole wheat dumped over the baby's head, atop a veil of course. When the veil is lifted items are spread around the baby with the intention being that the first item the baby grabs represents the life path he or she will walk.

Yes, you guessed it, I had reached for a pen.

I looked up at them sorrowfully, and all they said was, "Write, write as much as you can, about anything that brings you happiness."

I tried to refuse.  I stared at the journal and pen and slipped back into the darkness, until my son, my fourteen year old broke through.

"Fight, damn it, fight!" I heard him like a whisper drifting in the wind.  

"You are not listening to me," he exclaimed.

I tried to focus. I had to mentally tell myself to look into his eyes and focus on him. When I did, I saw there a sorrow far deeper than what I was feeling.

"I can't do this without you, mom. I love you. Please, fight.  Not for you, for me!"

I felt sorrow and love, pain and guilt.  He held out the pen and placed my journal within reach. 

And this is why I came back, this is why I chose to live!

The real writing didn't start till I was operated on, released from the hospital and in the middle of my second chemo.  But the living, the wanting to live, that started when my son refused to let me go!


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You can also find me on Facebook at: Marine Yanikian-Sutton