The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,135

made by any human being. The blue of the cloudless sky, the light of the sun that, at that time of year, shone for twenty hours a day, and the perfect whiteness of the land itself was so intense that it was almost too much to bear.

Over the next seven days, I would escape the noise of the ship to kayak, paddling through the deepest quiet and the silkiest waters, waters that rippled with each stroke, waters that perfectly reflected the sky’s mood. Contrary to popular belief, Antarctica is not all white. It is yellow, pink, red, and purple in the light of the quasi rising and setting sun; it is black and gray in the volcanic rock that covers the beaches where the snow has melted for the season. It is orange in the penguin beak, green in the shallow waters, and brown in the seal coat. And to it all, there is a vibrancy, purity, and beauty that never failed to make me breathless and tearful, that made me grateful to whatever gods there may be for having given me sight to behold such magnificence.

In Antarctica, I felt as if we had departed our home planet and were closer to some serious answers about what it all means. One cannot help but think big thoughts in such a place. One cannot help but imagine God—and I use the word God to refer not to the one depicted in any religious teachings but rather to a being that may very well be a force comprised of all the life that has been and is and will be, a force that is incomprehensible to the mind but perhaps perceptible to the soul, the way great poetry eludes logic but overwhelms the emotions. And within the shadow of that greatness and grandeur, I felt small, insignificant, a little life spanning a second in time on a little blue planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a universe that goes on forever and ever, an infinitesimal blip in space and time.

Feeling small and insignificant is a rarity in the course of our daily lives. Sure enough, once I returned from Antarctica, I again became consumed by the minutiae of my life, minutiae that often felt important and momentous—navigating family and friend dramas, drafting hundred-page contracts late into the night and vehemently negotiating with opposing counsel over little words as though it all mattered so much, feeling annoyance at the guy who cut me in line, planning a wedding, buying an apartment, agonizing over which crib to buy, battling the kids over teeth brushing and TV watching and on and on with all the stuff of life. We live every day not in the shadow of greatness and grandeur but within the confines of our small but seemingly enormous lives. It is a natural way to be; after all, we must live our lives.

And then things happen that jerk us out of our complacency and make us feel small and powerless again. But I have learned that in that powerlessness comes truth, and in truth comes a life lived consciously.

When the time comes, I will happily and with a great sigh of relief climb into my bed knowing that I will never need to get up again. I will surround myself with family and friends, as my grandmother did. I will eagerly greet the end of this miracle, and the beginning of another.

Epilogue

by Joshua Williams

I’d like to begin by saying that I am a much more private person than Julie was. I don’t think that it would have ever occurred to me to do what she has done—to leave a chronicle of her life and her illness that lays it all bare, and reveals her story so intimately, to so many. But of course I believed in her so completely, and loved her so dearly, that I became a believer in her writing, my personal feelings aside, no matter how hard it was to sometimes read.

And so now I put the finishing note on this story, just as she asked me to do.

I write this from the room in our apartment, our dream home, where Julie died.

Her hospice bed was right here, here as she said her final goodbyes, here as the cancer finally had its way. It’s been three months and four days since that morning—March 19, 2018—a bright late-winter morning. So much living happened in this room before that day, though. Before Julie combined the apartments that