The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,137

we both were, as it became clear to us that the end that we had been contemplating and fighting against and surrendering to for close to five agonizing years was now upon us. “How can I die?” she asked searchingly. “How can I be dying?” She repeated the questions over and over that morning, between sobs. The words in those questions took on every conceivable meaning—they were both procedural and philosophical. How can this be happening to me? she seemed to be asking. And, how does one go about dying, in the practical sense? How do I do this? They were, of course, thoroughly logical and reasonable questions, very Julie questions to ask, and at that moment the only questions left to consider. Because, of course, Julie had already seen to everything else.

She had taken care of every last detail for me and the girls, everything except: How were we supposed to go on living without her?

Well, from where I sit in this place where she lived so vividly, I can say that there is no good answer to that question. And I suspect that there never will be.

One of the things I most want you to know is that Julie died just as she wanted to die. She was surrounded by the people she loved most in the world—her parents; her sister, Lyna; brother, Mau; beloved cousins Nancy and Caroline; my parents and sisters. And, of course, Mia, Isabelle, and me. One week before the end, on the evening of March 12, we invited people from every stage of her life to our home and held a vigil, just as she’d asked. She lay on the couch in the living room as Mother Kate from our church led the room in prayers and moments of meditation, and one by one, the people who had gathered around her told stories of Julie’s life—of her life as a college student, or as an intrepid world traveler, or as a class mom, or as a fellow cancer patient, or as a writer—and we laughed and we cried and we ate and we drank. All except Julie, that is. She had stopped eating, and would never eat again.

During the vigil, the hospice team showed up with her bed, and they discreetly set it up in the room where I now sit. That was the first night Julie would spend in that bed, which marked the night before as the last night we would sleep in the same bed.

To say that I was terrified at what was to come does not convey the depth of my terror, but to say that I also wished fervently for an end to Julie’s suffering—in spite of myself—well, my words are truly inadequate to describe the size of that moment. But those opposite emotions that I felt give you an idea of the confusion that the imminent death of the most important person in your life brings on. When you are as sick as Julie was, deliverance becomes an act of mercy.

* * *

—

Nothing can prepare you for what happens after death.

Numbness initially protects you from the crushing power of forever, and so in the first weeks and even months after Julie left us, there was a jarring lightness to life. All the shoes had dropped, the ceaseless nightmare of terminal disease was over, and the horror of watching the person you most love in all the world suffer terribly abruptly stopped. Five years of frenzy and fear, suddenly gone. To say that it was unexpected and counterintuitive to feel happiness and even moments of real joy as notions of the future for me and Mia and Belle began to creep into my consciousness would be beyond understatement. I was shocked by these feelings, and found myself taking long walks in Fort Greene Park as spring came on, allowing myself to begin to process all of it, really for the first time. Living with the constant emergency of terminal illness doesn’t give you the chance to do that. Instead, you function moment to moment, day to day, maybe week to week. Beyond that, there is no future. And then, suddenly, there was a future, slowly spreading out before us.

At first, this was surprising, and quite a relief. “This isn’t so horrible,” I thought to myself on more than one occasion. And then, just as suddenly, the anesthetic effect of trauma begins to wear off, and the deep pain of permanent loss begins to set in. That