Lifesavers for Latasha

Originally written on July 13, 2024, Day 12 of the HLT Journey

Today was tough for Latasha and me, mainly because of pain. Physical, mental, and emotional pain for us both.

I ask: Can you have love without pain or pain without love?

I have thought a lot about this today because marriage is a fortress built from many things. I suppose each marriage has its unique aspects, but I offer that all marriages have the basic five tenets:

1) Trust
2) Respect
3) Friendship
4) Attraction (physical, spiritual, and personality)
5) Love

These five tenets of marriage make up the team dynamic. They are the principles for operating as one and supporting each other, for better or worse.

In my question of love and pain, I reflect on our marriage vows, specifically for better or worse.

What does that mean, for better or worse? This very aspect of the marriage vow has manifested itself during our marriage and the transplant journey without me even really seeing it. I remember like it was yesterday when Tasha and I were dating, and she had the “talk” with me about her condition and the seriousness of it—the terminal prognosis and very soon-to-be-unknown expiration date, if you will.

That conversation was powerful, but it never deterred me from loving her and wanting to build an empire with her and conquer whatever came our way. Period. Not one second thought. Tasha questioned my sanity, and finally, so did others, but I would rather have a few short hours, days, months, years, or decades with her in my life than not have it at all.

I remember the day I met her and the feeling that came over me. It was like a divine intervention of my crappy life from unchecked past traumas and bad choices in life. Tasha changed my life and the trajectory of it just by simply being a great woman who saw me for me.

To my point, this is important because when a man and woman enter into that marriage and embodiment, for better or worse, they better mean it. They better know that with love comes pain.

Here is the love and the raw pain of it all.

The pain of watching your beloved suffer from an ailment you can’t fix. From seeing her give up a career she loved. From seeing her passion for baking die from depression. From seeing her spark for adventure die from always being tired of the medicine’s side effects. From seeing her push me away because she thinks I deserve better. From seeing her angry at God for robbing her of the opportunity to be a mother. From seeing her question life itself. The list goes on…

That, my friends, is actual pain; the real pain is feeling helpless to do anything. The pain of hurting with her for a lot of the same reasons. The pain of just being in pain.

That’s the pain associated with loving someone who needs a transplant at such a young age and has so much to lose and gain. That’s harder than you can possibly imagine.

So imagine thinking that you’ve mastered pain and suffering due to this condition and as a precursor of being ready while waiting for the gift of life. The rest is easy, right? Nope. Not even close.

Oh, the hubris of that!

Today, I felt a whole new level of pain and guilt. Having your wife and best friend beg you to take away the pain and help her nearly broke me today. The flood of emotions I felt at that moment almost made me fall to my knees. The helplessness I felt watching her with tears begging for me to help her.

That is why I offer that love is pain and pain is love.

It’s messy. It’s beautiful. It’s ugly. It’s reality. I’d do it all over again to have my time, however short, with Tasha.