Illness

Early today in the morning my doctor told me I was in an advance stage of cirrhosis and
my days were numbered. At first, I thought it was a joke or a mistake. Maybe at the
laboratory, someone had swapped my blood sample with someone else’s. Then I asked
myself, “How can I have cirrhosis if I don’t even drink?”
He checked again the file and worried scheduled for me for a second round of tests for
the next week.
I was overwhelmed for the bad news and I only articulated a few word to ask him, “What
am I going to do in the meantime? Drink water?”
“Yes,” he answered, “and rest.”
I left the hospital and sat down on a bench at a bus station, I got out my mobile phone
and started to scroll my contacts list. First, I thought to call my mum, surely at that hour
she would be having a cup of coffee and thinking about what to have for breakfast. 
I thought calling my sisters, they wouldn’t believe me that I hadn’t been drinking alcohol,
they would judge me and that was the least thing I wanted at that moment.
While I was thinking about it, I thought, “I have my days numbered and I am wasting my
time thinking about who and how to inform such bad news.”
I kept thinking, I could call one of my friends but what they were going to say, “I’m sorry
man, let me know what I can do for you, I am so sorry.” Pity was neither what I wanted.
I decided to walk until I found someone and the way to say it.
I crossed a bridge and ended up in a park, suddenly everything seemed more coloured,
fuller of life and kind of eternal while me, I was fading away, I was dying. 
I fell on my knees and cried, the world had never needed me, and either it would miss
me when I died. I always had needed of him, but he had never needed anything from
me. I had been looking for a meaning, a purpose and goals to lead my life. But it
seemed that I had missed the point, I had missed to live, to enjoy the moment, to be in
the now.
My days were numbered, I knew that someday I was going to die, I just didn’t think it
would be of that way. 
So I changed the question, for something more tangible and real, and instead of asking,
how and who was I going to tell that I was dying? I asked myself, how was I going to live
today?
It’s midnight and I haven’t left the park, there is a nest with birds next to me and I can’t
wait to see the sunrise. 
"What is going to be the first song that they are going to sing at dawn?“

By Manuel Retiz