I cannot stop crying

Midnight.  I can't stop crying.  For so many reasons.

I was just holding Ed's hand and rubbing my face along his palm.  It's been so long since I've felt my husband touch me or hug me or hold my hand.

He's on day two of another "is this it or not" episode.  Right now, he's in and out of reality; the nurse thinks it's because he's on so much medication because yesterday, he couldn't breathe.  We just kept pumping morphine in to him in order to get him to relax and breathe.

It stabs at my heart to see him this way.  I cry because I can't understand him.  Either he's mumbling or slurring so much he's incoherent.  Or he'll say something like "I love you baby.  Where's Mrs. Murphy?"   At one point, he woke up begging me not to hurt him.  My heart got stabbed big time.

My dad was downstairs a couple hours ago and said I should think of it as him getting a LOT of sleep.  Ed's relaxed, he's breathing good now, he's not choking.  So there's that.  And that's the overriding thing -- he's not in pain, he's not gasping for air.

I'm crying because I don't know if my days with him are just that:  days?  Months?  I don't know.  I'm so sad because I just found Ed.  I waited so long to be with someone.  I'm crying because how fucking selfish is that?

I'm crying because I'm scared of of my mind that I won't be able to help him in the next 10 hours before a nurse gets here again.  That he'll choke or be in pain or vomit and I won't know what to do.

The other night I had to give him a syringe full of this last resort medication for when he was choking.  The needle seems like a foot long.  It didn't work.  I was going out of my mind with fear -- it turned out the liquid med was too thick to go in to the skinny needle.  It wasn't me at all but holy cats, in the moment, I was insane with listening to him choke, hearing him plead with me to fix it, not being able to get the syringe loaded.... will that happen again tonight???

I'm crying because my life without Ed feels scary.  I know I don't hold the prize for having a loved one die.  People pick themselves up and go on all the time.  I try to shine up my shield of armor.  Life will move on.  But tonight, at midnight, I feel empty and scared and anxious.

That's just a little part of my tears.  Mostly I'm just so sad.  So sad for Ed, all skinny and sick.  I crawled in to his hospital bed the other day and we both felt so good lying next to each other.  It's a pretty small bed so I had to scooch up real tight next to him but it felt so nice.

12:18 - he just woke up and saw me crying.  He said "I just thought of something" so I got up to sit next to his bed.  I asked him what he just thought of.  He told me it's going to be ok.  Don't cry baby, he said.  I kissed him and said, yes, it's going to be ok.  He fell back asleep.

I'm back in the chair across from his bed.  And I cannot stop crying.