Remember her as cute, she said

Monotony is the strangest thing about death before it happens. The rhythm loses its novelty. Decisions arrive and are made, moment by moment. And when you're very, very lucky, some of the decisions were made before they arrived. The breathing takes on a certain cadence, a hesitancy, like the lungs aren't quite sure if another breath will follow after. The meds, and the visits, and the half-baths, and the awkward half-sentences, all rhythms. A very specific harmony.

When I moved out of Hopespring, I left a set of sheets. They didn't fit my bed, but they fit the beds there, and you can never have too many sets of matching sheets. They tend to unmatch themselves in the laundry. I peeked in the door of her room, that used to be mine, and listened to her breathing. She stopped talking to her friend and stared at me, too tired for recognition, so I waved awkwardly and left. I can't regret that I know this dance, though it's never voluntary. My sheets were on her bed as she lay there, saying goodbye. I don't know why that was the thing I needed, but it was.

If I say grief is cystic, do you know what I mean? A thing that lurks in you, and so you build a little wall around it, because the anaphylactic reaction will kill you if you don't? But once the wall is built, the only way forward is with blood or poison or rupture or withering or if not then an unconscious vigilance against your own body that is with you till you die. So, still afraid, I keep pruning back the wall, and remind myself that pain does not mean suffering, and that grief and joy are the same dance underneath.

Cyst implies a parasite though, I'm realizing, and lurking an adversary. The dissonance has to resolve. This is not a foreign body, I sing to my cells, until I can peel everything back and reach into my own chest. Can I hold it out to you, reveal this thing that is now a part of me? Here is how it sounds. Here are the colors and words. Here is the shape. Here is how to recognize the new patterns in your DNA. The death of another is also the death of who I was in a world that had them in it. If the strangest part of dying is monotony, the strangest thing that happens after is learning to be born.