He was there. She was there. The pain was there, too. The three of them had one thing in common that day: they were all waiting to wait. On that chaotic day, the universe -or your God, if you wish-, had a new lesson to teach. At this point, they didn’t know what lesson it could be or whether they would learn something from it. They were just there. Waiting.
These two people have known each other for quite a while. Something I can tell in advance is that the lesson they were booked in by the universe was not about discovering a new side of each other. It was already well known for the best and the worst, the felt and the unfelt. That knowledge made the pain a third party on that day.
I can’t tell what time exactly it was. A few things I do know. They were certainly waiting to wait at the same scheduled hour. The woman and the man were prepared to suffer that day; her pain was meant to be physical. His pain was intended to be mental. It seems they were in control of their timing but lacked the capacity to know the time the pain would arrive. Was the lack of knowledge the lesson itself? Or the lack of control they would have over pain?
It didn’t matter that she was 57, nor the many painful moments she’s been through. Being fooled four or three times. Giving birth twice. Losing hope more than once. It’s true that none of that managed to kill her life, a life built up with infinite and genuine smiles. Yet none of that made her any stronger that Friday. Her fears were accumulating for weeks, thinking that this day could be her last day alive - again. As a breast cancer survivor, that Friday gave her the entitlement to feel nervous.
Although the man was a few decades younger. His lazy eyes were an indication that he had seen enough. Very few things in a universe of possibilities would barely surprise him. I’m hopeful that those few things that are yet to happen can bring back in him the smile he used to have. It used to look like the one from that woman. I doubt, however, that this story would see that happening for now.
He knew similarly that this Friday would not be any less painful than his past. An exhausting ego can still be snapped by the chaos of pain because there was one thing he did not know: it was how far the pain could go.
Another thing none of them saw coming. The pain got ahead of them and arrived way earlier.
It all started because the man and woman saw people around them carrying on with their lives with no clue as to what was about to happen to these two. Sharing the pain certainly helps with the healing. They were quite reluctant to do it. A hug from people who were not fighting the same battle as theirs would never be the same hug they could give each other.
A wondering world remains as to why they were unable to hug each other when the waiting time started.
Among reluctance to share, they opted to show the strong -and kind- side of them to others. You might conclude this was rather a way to pretend and lie to people. They adopted that behaviour to distract themselves from that Friday: no one would give special attention to their suffering - as they immersed themselves in their surrounding social conversations.
It isn’t clear what time it was or what time it has been since the waiting started. What I was told is that the pain was at the beginning, only manifesting in the man’s mind. He was the first one to see how awful it was to wait. He seemed to be fighting with it and having no feedback at all.
In his surroundings, beautiful things were coming out of people who did not feel the pain but cared about them. Those guests were not fighting the same battle. And that’s what made things beautiful.
It makes things beautiful because the guests understand the relationship to which the man and the woman are tied. That understanding made the man appreciate the gift of the present, the here and the now. Tears were coming out of him as he realised how important it was to care about others since those others now cared about him. I have a feeling that at least the man has already learned a lesson that day.
Though I haven’t forgotten about the woman, the woman herself could not feel any pain yet.
Perhaps the anaesthesia running in her body could delay the sensation of everything for some hours. Death and life were at play at that moment. Bless her unconsciousness and the wisdom of the surgeons. Bless the people who were with the man, too, as he forgot the magnitude of what they had been waiting for.
It could be a combination of many things that landed him into a joyful present: the Christmas music bringing in the spirit two months earlier, the glass of a 2021 red wine from the north of France, the raclette cheese melting in, or the connection with people he had feelings for.
It was a chaotic joy that soon got interrupted by a call that marked the end of the waiting they had waited for. As he picked up the phone, he saw on the screen the face of a mother complaining that the hospital service was so bad that she could grab her phone to let everyone know the surgery was successful and that it’s been ages since she woke up from the anaesthesia. It was then good news for him to see his mother alive. A mother whose pain was just starting to awaken, but with the assurance to know that she had a son on the other side of the planet who would soon cross the Atlantic to give that hug we could not see happening earlier.
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