"I hate this place!"

Finding the front door standing wide open, she stepped in onto the dirty bare wood floor, paused and glanced toward the two doors that lead into the recesses of the house. "Hello?" She heard a rattle and followed the sound through the door that lead into the kitchen. The first person she saw was the heater repairman sitting on the hallway floor and then her husband's head behind the stove. It was surreal that they seemed not to acknowledge her entrance, that the silence seemed to be able to mute the clank of a wrench as it thumped to the floor.

The cold came through her jacket and she noted that the back door stood wide open, too. Even with both doors wide open, the stale odor of urine mingled with the odor of latex paint and the thick atmosphere felt difficult to breath in.

Breaking the silence again, she said, "I hate this place!" The heater repairman glanced up at her briefly, then returned to his work. Her husband's head bobbed behind the stove.

Most of the time we live thinking that there is order to our lives. We build our plan for our tomorrows on the basis of that order. We think we know where we will be tomorrow and who we will be with and where we will live. But sometimes the unexpected, even the unbelievable can happen and it can change everything in a blink of realization. The continuing thread of our lives is snapped in two--the plan we had for tomorrow becomes ridiculous and what we did yesterday, in light of our discovery, becomes stupid. Denial is usually the first response. Then slowly truth wars with denial and we take a step back, examine the evidence, frown, face it and fear it. But the change, undesired and unexpected, makes the denial impossible. Suddenly the future is rife with questions. The unknown can be frightening, a place where our worst fears may be realized. Then all we can do is devise a new plan and hope that lady luck will smile on our future and make it secure.

"I choose life," she said. She said it boldly and then repeated it to herself more quietly. That was the absolute choice, the writing on the wall. It was a choice between death and life. Choosing to live should be simple enough, but it didn't seem that way. The echo of that statement colored the days that seemed to net altogether too little progress in the right direction. She was ready to move, to solve the dilemma, but barriers stood in her way. With every step since the day the truth began to dawn on her those words seemed to vibrate through her limbs. Fear and fury! It took fear to move her and fury to energize her.

Remembering now the many events that accumulated over the years, this day of change shouldn't have been unexpected. When had it begun? Was it in the fall of 2000 that she experienced the first symptoms of the disease? Six years! That's a lot of denial. But of all the possible causes this one--this one--was the most difficult to accept or believe.