It’s been months now, but part of me is still there
in that waiting room.
Everyone else has moved on.
The days have stacked themselves back into something that looks like normal.
We laugh again, plan again, even dream a little.
But no matter how much life fills the spaces, there’s a corner of me that never left.
That day lives beneath my skin.
Sometimes it shows up when the house is quiet,
sometimes when the world feels too loud.
It’s the ache behind my ribs when I see him fall asleep beside me,
the lump in my throat when I hear a certain sound, a monitor beep, a text tone, a prayer whispered under my breath without thinking.
I can still feel the coolness of the floor under my shoes, the way my hands trembled around his ring, the sting of fluorescent lights that never dimmed.
I can still feel the weight of waiting how time folded in on itself, how I didn’t know if the next minute would bring a miracle or an ending.
People say time heals, but I don’t think time erases the sacred places.
I think it just teaches you how to carry them.
So yes, I still sit there sometimes in the quiet of my mind, in the corner of that room,
still praying, still holding on, still waiting for the words “off pump.”
But I also sit beside him now —
listening to his heartbeat,
breathing in the steady rhythm of still here.
Maybe that’s what healing really is —not leaving the waiting room behind, but learning to live with it inside you, and letting it remind you every day how fragile, how holy, and how precious this life still is.
