One day, you’re sitting at the kitchen table, trying to make sense of the endless medical bills that don’t seem to stop coming and you have a complete breakdown. Suddenly, you’re sobbing into your bowl of chicken noodle soup and it hits you you haven’t cried this hard since you’d been diagnosed. You can’t stop crying over all the things you think that you’ve lost. This goes on for a good half an hour and when you’ve finished, there is a newfound clarity right along with that startingly large pile of Kleenex. Sure, you’ve lost things, but look at all you do have. The best friends anyone could ever ask for, ones who would give you a kidney if you needed it. And parents who used to be at best, distant and at worst, cold, who now you could speak to freely without worry that you are being judged or resented. And you also have the best thing in the whole world, even if you were incredibly stupid in your old life and you threw it away only because you were a coward. You have love. Sometimes, you think the only reason you went into remission is because if you died without her knowing how you really felt, you would never forgive yourself.

There is so much to be grateful for and you know your life is at the very top of the list. You try and remind yourself of that fact when you begin to feel sorry for yourself, Because you are still here. One breast, a head only of stubble and skinny as a scarecrow, but there you are. And when she tells you are the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, you have to believe her.

Spark– Part Two-Alice

 Breathe. You have to remind yourself to breathe, because damn it, you feel like you’ve forgotten how. All you see are the tubes sticking out of her from every end and how fragile she is. Like she could fly away right then and there. Her chest is barely moving up and down and you know, with a frightening sense of certainty that if her breathing stops, yours will too. That is a strangers face against the pillow, pale and yes, sick.  It is not really her. She is tan and muscular and so very much alive. You are shivering with the reality of this, the weight of it. You are going to lose her and it is not a matter of if. Just when.