My husband lives with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). I use “lives with” intentionally because COPD has no cure; the lungs don’t repair themselves. Eventually, they harden, limiting breathing until the heart can no longer withstand the stress. It’s a pernicious disease that kills, one way or another.
Not a happy ending to our love story, for sure. But then, all life ends the same way. It’s just about quality, how we live whatever life we’ve got, and timing.
Is there ever a good time to die? No. A bad time? Yes — like today, or tomorrow, before I’ve lived fully, before I feel truly done. Before all our “I Love You’s” are shared.
Listening to my husband struggle for breath, hearing the rattles and chugs of his lungs as he sleeps, talks, walks, does anything, is a constant reminder of death’s presence and Love’s eternal grace.
Love teaches me: I can’t avoid death. And so, I’m choosing to befriend it, or at least, to acknowledge its presence without fear and loathing colouring our interactions with dread,resistance and foreboding.
This poem is my way of grappling with its presence, and honouring my husband’s courageous fight for each breath.
Hard-won Breath
by Louise Gallagher
Hardened lungs
gasp,
struggle for air,
a painful search
for release
from disease
that chokes
each breath, hard-won
against a crown-of-thorns starfish
leaching life
from bleached coral dying
for life.
Dare Boldly 