Seven Days Until Forever

He gave me seven days. He gave me 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, or 604,800 seconds. However you want to put it, I’m dying. My mind is racing faster than I can comprehend, and with each breath I draw I worry it will be my last. I want to leave this hospital. To just get up and walk out, and have the freedom to live the last seven days of my life as thoroughly as possible, but there are two things holding me back:

You can’t just get up and leave the hospital with an IV plugged into your arm.
I am overpoweringly weak.
With that being said, my first of seven days was spent in a cold white room filled with tears and doctors. Despite the fact that, as I lived it, it seemed to drag on and on, it was over before I knew it. The day just seemed to escape me. I didn’t want the rest of my days to feel like that. Meaningless... Empty. That’s not living, it’s just plain torture.
On the second day, (the day after I learned I would be dying within a week) I got to go home. I was not-so-pleasantly surprised to see all of my family there. I mean, sure I’d like to see them before I left, but I could do without everyone saying, “We’re gonna miss you,” and “You’ll always be with us,”. I hadn’t died yet, and it was horrible to have everyone speak to me like they were saying goodbye to a ghost. When all the family had left, my dad and I sat at the table playing Rummy with cards that were folded and dirty, my dad asked, “June, how did you like seeing your family?”. I told him it was alright, but that I wanted to spend the next days before my death doing as I please. He agreed, but I was disappointed by the painful look in his eyes.

The next morning, I got up and counted the days till my end. Five. I dragged my feet through the hallway and drooped my skinny body over the couch and turned on the television. My dad walked in with his plush navy-blue robe on and his blond hair tousled in every direction. He began to brew some coffee and asked me what I want for breakfast. “I don’t care, whatever.” I replied, redirecting my attention back to the previously recorded episode of The Bachelor. “Yes you do, come on. How about some eggs and bacon? Or pancakes? I need you to talk to me, June.” His voice didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound strong like a dad’s voice was supposed to. It was as if a window had cracked and he was trying to use tape to keep it from shattering. He sounded weak. “Oh, yeah sorry. Just eggs and bacon, I guess.” I said, trying to satisfy him. After that I thought about what I should do. There were so many things I couldn’t do that after a while I got sad and had to stop thinking like that for a while. Breakfast was good, although almost too good. Maybe it was just me being paranoid, but there was something about the crispy bacon and perfectly cooked egg that made me think I was getting special treatment.

Later that day I called all of my friends. I didn’t tell them I was dying, even though I probably should have. I just told them that I couldn’t wait to see them at school, even though I would never see those hallways again.. A couple of my friends asked why I hadn’t been at school for so long. I just said I would tell them later. That wasn’t a lie. I had already begun writing a letter dedicated to all my friends, just so my death wasn’t this horrible event without any room for closure. My dad said it would be faster if I typed it, but I think that a written letter means more than a typed one.

Before I knew it there was two days before my death. When I walked to the kitchen I saw my dad huddled on the floor by a mountain of tissues and an ocean of tears. It was so horrible seeing this. I’ve never seen somebody I love in such pain, his sobs were loud but withheld, and his entire body was shaking. “Dad! Stop crying! Please! Stop!” I yelled as I broke down. “What, June?? Am I not allowed to cry?! Am I not allowed to cry over the fact that my ONLY daughter is dying?!” His voice was harsh but then the look in his eyes seemed to change as he went from angry to helpless. He looked at me with puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks. “I’m sorry, June, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I know you never met your mom, but she was a great woman. Losing her was one of the hardest things. Now I have everything I love slipping through my fingers and there is nothing for me to grasp onto.” I understood what he meant. I felt like the worst person in the world to hurt him like this.

When the mental pain died down, I went to get ready to go somewhere with my dad. I dressed in puffy warm pants and a snow jacket. I pulled a thick beanie over my ears and put on heavy boots. “June, what would you think about going to the pool, too?” My dad’s voice grew louder as he walked closer to my door. “We can go before the park or after, it’s up-” His voice stopped dead in the middle of his sentence as he opened my door to see me dressed in clothes that were totally inappropriate for the eighty degree weather outside. “I want to see the snow before I die.” I said. “Take me to the snow, Dad.” My dad paused for a second, his mouth opened slightly as I prepared for him to say no. After he processed it, he said, “Um... Alright. Just give me a second to get dressed and then we’ll go!” I laughed in disbelief.
~

The snow was amazing, and I loved feeling the cold. It made me feel alive, as though I wasn’t sick. As though I wasn’t dying. I wondered if this is what heaven would look like. Soft, white, sparkly, seemingly endless. But heaven doesn’t melt, or so I hoped. As my dad and I walked along the powdery ice, I asked my dad if I could go sledding. “Please, dad! Please, just once?” I begged childishly. “It’s not worth the risk, June.” My dad said sternly. I agreed and continued walking. We were on a pathway that was supposedly stone before the snow touched it. Trees shimmered with snow covered branches, and at the end of the tunnel of trees I could see the sunshine, white and bright, at the very end. I smiled and decided I wouldn’t mind if I died right now. I didn’t feel sick, I felt pure, whole. “Dad, please don’t be sad when I die. Please promise me you’ll stay okay. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth being sad. You have the rest of your life ahead of you, and I don’t want my death to take a toll on even one second of it. So will you promise me to stay okay?” It took a lot of courage to say that, so I turned to see the look on his face. To my surprise, he wasn’t there. “Dad?” I shouted. “Dad!?” I yelled, spinning around. What I saw I couldn’t believe. I saw my skinny body nestled in the snow, my skin pale, lips blue, eyes staring into nothingness. My dad was screaming. “Dad!” I yelled, running towards him. “Listen to me!” I tried to put my hands on him, to shake him. I tried to touch him in any way, punching and kicking and screaming in disbelief. “This can’t be happening! This isn’t right! DAD!” I felt myself separating from my body, from this world. It felt like velcro, like I was being ripped from the only other thing I ever truly knew. First I lost my body, then I couldn’t speak, for my soul had no portal to which my words could meet the real world. Then blackness came.

I awoke. As much as I wanted to scream, and cry, and throw a fit, I was extremely calm and wondrous. This isn’t what I expected. My thoughts echoed as words in this world I was still trying to understand. It wasn’t white. In fact, it wasn’t any color. It was clear. Usually when we see clear, let’s say, as glass, we never truly see the glass. We see what’s behind it, but the glass itself is never showcased itself. So this is what ‘clear’ looks like. I laughed because I had realized that skies were never actually clear on earth. Sure, they were blue, but they weren’t like this. This is beautiful. There was no ground to stand on, nothing to touch, nothing to hurt myself on. I hoped it wouldn’t be like this forever, though. Forever is a long, long time, and I feel as though I would get lonely. So I began to wander. It’s hard to explain. On the earth, you would travel to wherever you wanted to go. You would stare at the window and watch as you drove past all the familiar things and into new things. In this world, everything moved for you. Even if you couldn’t see it moving, you could feel it, and the first thing I could truly see was a mirror.
There I was, transparent, but not so much that I couldn’t see myself. I had hair. I wanted more than anything to touch it, but I couldn’t move. My hair was long and blond, one of my favorite things. It hung well beneath my shoulders in cascades of silk. My eyes were blue and my lips were full. I missed looking like this. Healthy. But I guess this is what I did look like now. I smiled and continued to explore.
I came across a beautiful woman with bright eyes and a warm smile. “Hello June,” she said. I instantly knew who she was. Despite the fact that I’d only ever seen her in pictures, or heard her voice in videos, I knew that, standing before me, was my mom. “You’ve only seen the beginning. There’s so much to see, so much to do. You’ll love it here.” she said, grabbing a hold of my hand. Then, she introduced me to a few things. We explored a world of stars, and talked for hours in the middle of the ocean, but the one thing I loved the most was the color she introduced me to. It wasn’t any color that I’ve ever seen, or anybody on Earth had seen for that matter. It was warm and cool at the same time, it was as though the rainbow mixed, but it wasn’t a messy brown. The essence of every beautiful color I’d ever seen was in this one, and it was instantly my new favorite. I knew what I was going to name it. “Let’s call it Delilah,” I said, naming it after my mother. I decided that, with so many new things to see, I wouldn’t mind spending forever here. I was a soul now, I didn’t have to express myself through a body, I could be free and endless without pain or sorrow. “So this is forever?” I asked. “No, June,” my mom said, “This is the beginning of forever.”