Jane
Everyone has time but me. I’m going to die very soon. I have cancer. I could tell you what kind, but why does it matter? Either way it’s going to kill me. I am only 20. I have only lived for twenty years. I have only been married for six months. But I know my time has come. I just know. But I won’t tell Mick. Mick is twenty-three, and the love of my very short happy life. I will never know what it is like to hold my children or drop off them at kindergarten. Hell, I will never have a child. I will never know who will win American Idol, my favorite show, next year. I guess I did see Michael Jackson die, and Johnny Cash. But who will be the next tragic star to die? Maybe I will know. Maybe I will know before anyone else. I do believe in God. Most people ask me, how I can believe in God when he is taking away this life at only twenty? But honestly, death at this age doesn’t bother me. I will get to die at this age, young and beautiful. I fortunately still have my hair. We had to stop chemo awhile ago, it wasn’t working. People come by all the time, sad for me, but there is always a gratefulness in their eyes that it isn’t them. Mick never leaves my side. I think he thinks I am going to live. That I will somehow miraculously live through this and we will grow old together. But that will never happen unfortunately. It kills me to think that he will go on and get remarried and have kids and grandkids and grow to a ripe old age and die in his sleep. I wonder who he will marry. Will he marry someone I know? Will he remarry someone young and stupid who will cheat on him all the time? I kind of hope so. Just so I will always be his favorite. But then again, I do not. I want him to be happy. I guess, even if that is without me. I do feel a pang of jealousy, though, that he will get to live on and I won’t. I remember when we were younger at kindergarten and they asked what we wanted to grow up to be, I said I wanted to be an astronaut. Not dying. Nobody considers or plans for this. I remember when I first got sick. I was in my sophomore year of high-school. I was in cheerleading, and on top of the pyramid. Like I always thought I would be. But then I fell. I wasn’t injured seriously, just a bruise. Just a bruise. That didn’t go away. And that’s all I will ever be, a bruise on life.