I need to write about everything that has happened recently, how I now know the acrid, yellow color skin turns when the liver ebbs to jaundice, how I have spent more time in the hospital these past few days, surrounded by tubes and biohazard bins and beeping machines and the scent of half-alive bodies than I have ever in my life. I need to write about the distressing way my best friend’s mouth is turned down at the corners, how cruel a sun-dappled day feels when someone you love has wires strung from their veins and their hair a dry matted knot clinging to the neck. I need to write about these things but I don’t know how.
I have never had someone close to me die, so sickness is something I am unpracticed in dealing with. Once when I was 15, my Grandmother had a seizure in front of me in the hospital and I had to run to the nurse’s station and shout, “She is having a seizure!!!” and they just stood there rubbing their palms together, unsure of what to do. We moved her to a different hospital shortly afterward. That is the closest I’ve been.
I was in a dark bar that Chronicle journalists frequent with the Giants game on the TV when I found out. “He has lung cancer and it doesn’t look good,” read my father’s short email. I burst into tears and my friend had to rub my cheeks and put his hand on my shoulder blades very gently. We left in a cab and my hair was sticking to my face from tears. The cab driver didn’t know how sad I was, or maybe she did, because she showed me pictures of animals she’d drawn on her cell phone and talked about how she was teaching her grandson to speak Spanish.
I was on Grant Street when I got the phone call. “Her breast cancer came back but it is only Stage I so she should be okay.” I wrote a message to a friend I haven’t seen in a long time and tried not to cry, but then did, very hard, in broad daylight next to the jewelry store.
I was at work when I got the message. I knew she would never be the same after that and because of it I would never be the same either. “You take on other people’s problems,” my friend offered. “You shouldn’t do that.” I can’t help it, I said. It’s who I am. “Because of it you will probably always feel pain more acutely than other people,” he said. “I think your empathy is a quality you should value, but one that might destroy you, too.” I did not think about that for too long because I was ordering flowers and making plans to go to the hospital. Self-pity is useless and selfish and we don’t have time for it anymore.
I was in the car on the way to the hospital when I got the phone call. “He committed suicide on Tuesday,” my mom said. “He had depression for a long time.” I had just seen him at Christmas and he seemed okay, but depression is always like that: very secret and deep beneath the surface, buried in the organs and the soul, never close enough to the skin to ever see up close. My mom said, “I didn’t want to tell you this but your godmother also has breast cancer. She is doing chemo.” Why is everyone getting sick? I asked. “These things always seem to come in waves,” she responded. “I’m trying to locate some meaning in it all, but it’s difficult.” I bit my lip and started to cry in the car. My boyfriend turned down the music. “I think it means we should talk more,” I said. Her emphatic agreement almost destroyed my eardrum.
I need to write about everything that has happened but I can’t sleep and I can’t string words together properly and it’s not my story to tell, so this is how far I’ve gotten.