a beautiful nightmare

If the universe told you that you could have one wish - just one, glorious, perfect dream, with the caveat that you would be forced to endure the firery crash of it's demise, would you take it? If you knew the only way to see this dream was to carry the fire in your hands until the pain consumes last glimmer of it and leaves you scarred beyond recognition - would you do it?

If your choice was to live through all of the beautiful nightmare, or never see any of it at all - what would you chose?

I would chose this - a million times over.

A million and one.

If this fresh hell is the price we pay for every kiss; every family game night; every argument about the Beatles vs. The Jackson 5; every slow dance in the kitchen; for knowing the way he smells; and feeling the way his hand fits perfectly in mine - if this is the hefty price tag for even one of those moments, I would pay it. Knowing him, loving him, watching him love our children, adventuring with him - this is what I would choose, over and over and over again - no matter the cost. I cannot bear the thought of this piece of his life happening without us together.

Rico has made the brave and devastating decision to not continue with chemo and radiation treatments. This means he has begun in home hospice care. 

He is doing pretty well mentally, but physically things are hard. 

It's hard to believe that less than two months ago we had just decided to hit the road next year and live our best lives. So now we spend a lot of time imagining what we would do if we had just one more "perfect" day together - one day with no rules, no cancer, nothing but time and love.

The best part of the perfect day game, is that we are never hoping for more than we've already had. There is never anything on the list that we haven't done yet. We always choose the sweetest juciest bits of life to relive. 

Today our perfect day started in a tiny seaside cabin on Casey Key. We woke up and I made him peanut butter toast with cherries on top. We walked on the beach watching dolphins breach and rescuing conches from a lady gathering up buckets of them to sell. By lunchtime we are in Chicago, reliving our first kiss, running through the city to Harold's Fried Chicken Shack, and spending an hour on Navy Pier where he shows me the first ever gift he bought for Kaia. Sometime between lunch and dinner we are holding our sweet new baby Nika, and we're all snuggled on the couch for the first time as a family of five. At dinner time, our kids have grown, we are all on the Hawaiian Beach we loved so much. All of you are there celebrating our perfect day with us. We are surrounded by people we love. There is live music and laughter and my mom's homemade chicken enchiladas, Rico's spinach puffs, marry-me-chicken, New York Pizza and his Grandma Leah's peach cake. We slow dance and listen to the waves crash.

The day always stops before midnight, because neither of us can bear the next day. But I would hold fire in my bare hands - I would hold it until there was nothing at all left of me, just for that one perfect day.