I want Mette to live.

To get better.

To gain strength.

To be healthy again.

I want her to return to work as a surgical nurse--a profession she dearly loves.

I want her to finish digging the new fish pond in the back yard. I want her to plant trees until a forest hides our house.

I want to take her to New Orleans again. And skiing the Alps. And to the beach house where the three of us we spent a wonderful week last autumn.

And to Greenland again. To the places of our spring time together. Soapstone Valley. Fox Canyon. North Mountain. South Mountain. A Launch. B Launch. C Launch. Dundas Village. The top of Mount Dundas. J Site. Sparum's Cabin. P Mountain. Camp ToTo. Cape Atoll. The villages. The places the arctic foxes hide their spring pups.

And to all the other places we have talked about. Dreamed about.

And to visit all the friends we long to see again--all over.

My first confession is that I want all of those things because I am selfish.

My second confession is that I am not, and I never have been, good enough for Mette. She has outclassed me in every way imaginable. She graced me with her presence. She humored me and allowed me to believe I was worthy of her love. She saw the mismatch and, in typically Mette style of kindness, didn't mention it.

She was like that. She endeared people to her almost instantly. My youngest son said it to me just a few days ago on the phone: " . . . I liked her from the very beginning . . . she just accepted me, as I was . . . she never ever thought about trying to change me into what she thought I should be . . ."

She saw people more clearly than I could. She told me how special my oldest son is, long before I recognized it myself.

I am writing now, on the 4th day of January in the new year of 2001, and I'm writing as if Mette is past tense. She is not. She is alive and fighting for life in the recovery room the next building over from where I'm sitting. Perhaps 100 meters away. I can feel her pulse, and see her slightly labored breathing as she wears off the anesthesia of today's pokes and probes. She is a little yellow, because her liver is in distress...it is not cleaning the blood as it should and the excess 'yellow yuck' taints her eyeballs and give her skin a cast--On the first day of this year Mormor said "It looks like you have a little sun tan." She thought it was a complement and was embarrassed to learn why her granddaughter looked the way she does. She can be forgiven for not knowing...she was ninety years old on the second day of this year, not to mention that she has been, for all intents and purposes, kept in the dark about the severity of Mette's illness.

That is a burden I don't have to endure.

One burden I do have to carry is the lie I told Mette's mother about an hour ago. She asked if the procedure was successful and I answered that I didn't know. I knew. I didn't want to hear myself say what needed to be said. I didn't want to see her mom disintegrate before my swollen, redden eyes. I chickened out. I had to flee the recovery room and go to where I am now and hide. I want to run away. Go somewhere else. So far away that the truth can't find me. Somewhere that there is peace for me.