I remembered that I never talked to my own mother about love either.
“It will get better, it’ll be okay,” my mother had told me one day when I was lovesick and couldn’t hide my reddened eyes. The words seemed so lame then. It took decades to finally find the truth and comfort in her simple response, “It’ll be okay.” Eventually I learned love could keep a person going, could stretch a person to her best. It could make anything beautiful, even winter. Love could keep you fighting for your life. Or it could rip your precious reserves to shreds.
At the end of November 2010, three days after Marika’s concert and still high on our victory, we were admitted to Strong for the stem cell transplant preparations. Punching at her cellphone with frantic thumbs, as I trudged under the weight of our bags, Marika trailed me to our room in the Oncology Unit. OUR room. This was the first time the nurses told me I could have the empty bed next to hers. No more trying to sleep in a reclining chair. No late night drives to Hope Lodge. I stowed away the last of our belongings and noticed Marika on her bed, transfixed on the computer. Crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, immobilized.
“I haven’t heard from the schools in Australia yet,” she said in a squeaky pinched voice. She had applied to two Australian universities, hoping to enter a nursing program in January 2012. The Roc Docs had warned it would take a whole year to recover after the transplant.
“Mareek, you just applied a few weeks ago,” I said, “It takes time.”
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she said, tears dribbling down her hot pink cheeks. She turned the computer around to show me a handsome young face with smiling blue eyes and long sandy-blond locks. “He’s going home. He has a girlfriend,” she sobbed.
Slowly, moving closer, in a high voice I asked, “Is this the Australian guy you’ve been hanging with the last few months?” She nodded, choking. Her whole body shuddered, and I remembered the pain of longing for lost love. I should have held her. Comforted her. But it was like I was wading into a cold lake. Tentatively. One frozen limb at a time. I kept my eyes focused on the face on the screen.
“He’s adorable,” I said, not knowing what else to say. She composed herself and added,
“He was always good to me. No man ever treated me better.”
“Then you’ll just have to go back to Australia. It’ll happen,” I said, touching the computer. “It’ll be okay.”
That was all she ever told me about the Australian. That was all I had to know. He made her happy. He made her sad. Somehow, it would all be okay.
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