The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,106

cured, who for some unknown reason escaped the death sentence. I find myself asking a God that never answers my questions—Why? Why them and not me? But that question seems inconsequential when I think of my children. I would sacrifice myself for my children a million times over. Are those women’s children somehow more deserving of a mother than mine are? My children are incredible little people. Mia is so smart and inquisitive and musically gifted. Isabelle is so compassionate and funny and graceful. If those mothers ever deigned to believe that their lives are more valuable than mine or that their children are more deserving of a mother than mine, I would indeed kill them in cold blood.

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What I have written here is perhaps the darkest thing I have ever written, for I am writing about rage, hatred, and violence. I truly believe that such feelings are universal parts of our human experience, brought on by such mundane things as being a mother or living in a place like New York City, the negative by-products of our social interactions and innate tendencies, which are heightened and exacerbated by high-stress conditions like cancer. But such negativity is often unacknowledged because no one wants to talk about something so ugly and unflattering; no one wants to be uncomfortable, embarrassed, ashamed.

But I seem to have lost whatever social graces would have told me to be uncomfortable, embarrassed, or ashamed. I don’t care anymore, because I am dying. My oncologist pretty much told me so after the last scans in mid-September. The radiation-immunotherapy combination was a colossal failure. Growth everywhere—in the lungs, in the abdomen, in the pelvis. The worst scans I’ve ever had. He kept describing new and bigger tumors. It was so awful I couldn’t even bring myself to read the scan reports, I, who like to think I’m so smart and should read everything. Dr. A.C. said I have a year without treatment. Given that I’ve exhausted the first, second, and third lines of treatment, whatever options remain are not going to extend my life much beyond that. And there’s always the possibility that treatment, mostly experimental at this point, could make me so sick that it would in fact shorten my life.

Please spare me the platitudes like “Only God knows your expiration date” and “Doctors don’t know.” Doctors certainly can make a better-educated guess than I can based on their professional experience. And I also don’t want to hear the trite “We are all dying.”

For a week after the scans I moved through the world in a daze. How could I still be shocked by anything after three years of this shit? I wondered. The daze was worsened by sleep deprivation and intense abdominal and pelvic pain that was most certainly the ever-growing tumors making themselves felt. And yet, I still moved, even though my movements were clumsy.

How did I still manage to walk the dog and get the kids ready for school and sit there and oversee Mia’s violin practice? How did I go to a barbecue at Josh’s boss’s house and smile and act normal? How did I take my children to birthday parties and make Costco runs? How did I move us back into our home as we finished our months-long apartment combination project? How could I do any of this even as I felt the life inside of me getting smaller, as I slipped ever closer to death?

Instinct, I suppose. Muscle memory. A powerful sense of obligation. An immensely practical nature, most of all. After I left Dr. A.C.’s office, I called my sister to tell her the news. Without tears, I told her that as much as she had not wanted to talk about this, we had to start talking about “it” now, that she needed to prepare to become my children’s surrogate mother, that I would rather she be their surrogate mother over any random woman Josh married. She would need to be the one to make sure the kids did their homework and practiced their instruments; she would need to collect and present to Josh extracurricular activity and summer camp options; she would need to supervise the running of the household. Unspoken was the understanding that she would provide that female emotional support my children will desperately need. I told her that I had already determined a short list of friends (and mothers) who would support and help her (since she doesn’t have children of her own), women