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In the morning, a non-emergency medical transport will arrive to take my sweetie to a hospice facility where he will receive 24 hour care from people who are trained and equipped to handle it. His needs are exceeding my abilities despite my best efforts to keep him comfortable. There has always been a plan in place that eventually he would go to the hospice; he said that I wasn't a nurse and that I shouldn't have to take care of him when things got really bad. He didn't want to put me through that. As if it was an imposition for me to take care of my sweetie. But here we are.

When the hospice people visited the first time, they asked him about moving to a facility but we promptly shot that down. He was feeling weak, but not ready to leave his home and his kitties. That was just 3 weeks ago. Now he is in such a weakened state that he needs help to sit up in bed, and more than once early Sunday morning I was certain that he had just taken his last breath. Last week he gave the go-ahead to move to the hospice but there were no beds available then. We got word today that they now have a bed for him.
I am torn between feelings of relief and feeling heartbroken.

I vividly remember the very first time I ever saw him; I was dropping something off at my friend Andy's house and he just happened to be there at the time visiting Andy's roommate Tommy. I remember thinking to myself 'Hot damn! Check out the cute redhead!'. I was in a hurry because I had to go to work so there were no introductions - but I made a mental note to ask Tommy who his cute friend was and whether or not he was single. I didn't get around to asking though due to other distractions in my life - I got robbed at knife point at my night shift job at the convenience store, and my roommate turned out to be schizophrenic and completely flaked out on me which had me looking for a different place to live.

As it turned out, my next roommates were my friends Andy and his roommate Tommy. One day I came home from work and there he was - cute redhead hanging out in our living room. I made sure to get his name this time - Danny - and after he left I grilled Andy for info on him. I was not at all surprised to find out he had a girlfriend. Of COURSE he did. It was par for the course that any dude I thought was cute would already be taken. I heaved a sigh and tried not to be disappointed...but I was.

He kept coming over though, he was Tommy and Andy's friend after all, and whenever I saw him I made a point of smiling and saying hello. Then one day I heard his girlfriend had dumped him. 'Ahaa! My big break!' I thought to myself, but alas I was beaten to the punch by the friend of one of my girlfriends and he was off the market again almost as quickly as he was on. I heaved another heavy sigh and tried *again* not to be disappointed.

He was with her for 2 or 3 years, and during that time I learned that he had a drinking habit and that this caused a lot of problems in his relationship. She eventually had enough though and gave him an ultimatum to dry out or it was over. So he went to rehab for a while, thinking that doing so might save his relationship. Unfortunately, his girlfriend had become interested in another guy and had no intentions of taking him back, sober or not, and while he was in treatment she was seeing this other guy. She actually told me that although she was through with Danny, she intended to keep stringing him along because she had him 'wound around her little finger'.

After he got out of rehab, he needed to find a place to stay (her idea) because she wanted him to prove he was going to stay sober before she'd live with him again. I helped get him an apartment in the building I lived and worked as a building caretaker in, but I kept what she'd said to myself. He seemed to be trying to maintain his sobriety and I didn't think telling him his girlfriend was a cheating b***h would help. He figured it out fairly soon though (she actually wrote about it in her journal and he found it) and decided he was single again and drank a beer.

I still liked him though and he and I began hanging out more often - watching tv, playing cribbage...that sort of thing. I caught him looking at me a few times and so did my friend Heidi. She told me that she was beyond certain that he liked me. 'Finally!!' I thought. Inwardly I was ecstatic - I had been lusting for this dude for at least 4 years, and now he was finally interested! I immediately decided that if he made a move he was going to get lucky and offered subtle encouragement to let him know I liked him too. It wasn't hard - I mean seriously, if at any time that I knew him he would have said 'let's go' my clothes would have magically fallen right off my body right then and there. I had it bad...

Then one day he made his move and - fireworks! I was head over heals in love. He was beautiful, smart, funny and chivalrous...he was my champion, my knight in shining armor - and he made me feel as though I was his goddess.

Things were good for a little while, but then his drinking began to spiral out of control again. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say we spent the next 5 years having horrible fights followed by volcanic make-up sex until one day, thoroughly heartbroken, I finally had to call it quits. The strain of an alcoholic boyfriend was affecting other areas of my life and my job and it just couldn't go on any longer. As wonderful as he was when he was sober, he was as vicious when he was drunk - and sober Dan became more and more rare. I didn't offer any ultimatum - I just quietly told him I couldn't deal with it anymore and that we should part ways. He was addicted to alcohol and I was addicted to him. One of us had to quit - so he decided to go back to rehab.

I visited him often in rehab to offer encouragement and let him know I still cared about him. After what seemed to be a long time (to me anyway) he finally got out and came home. This time he stuck with it, I had my knight back and it was a dream come true.

Ever since then, for 7 years now, he has told me daily that he loves me (and I tell him I love him too) and he has been the most wonderful man. I feel truly blessed to have had those years with him and I am grateful for every second we've had together.

It has been 1 year and 3 weeks since the horrible day he came home from the doctors office and said it was cancer. He decided to fight it and his first round of chemo and radiation was successful - there was significant shrinkage in his tumors and he was looking and feeling good again. We felt hopeful; we had a great summer and thought we might actually have a few more years together.

We were wrong. His next scan showed it was on the move and had spread to his other lung and his liver. He lost dexterity in his hands and was having more pain. Another round of chemo was prescribed, but he didn't get to have it - he had a seizure at the doctors office while waiting for his appointment last October and wound up in the hospital for a week. A new scan showed it had moved into his brain and that's what caused the seizure. Since then he has been deteriorating rapidly.

We went in for the chemo appointments but he was so weak they wouldn't give it to him. He grew progressively weaker and we started getting home hospice nurse visits. In the past month he has wasted away to nearly nothing and largely withdrawn into himself - but he has somehow still managed to tell me every day that he loves me.
I love him too and I will be utterly lost without him in my life.