I Weep for Some Part of Every Day

Zine from the CancerGram 18 of 18, in which I depict my death vision.

By the end of radiation, weeping had become a daily event. A deep and abiding sadness and come over me. I felt like I was grieving a lifetime of hopes and dreams and goals.

With friends I wept so deeply, so comprehensively, that it changed things. Close friends became closer. A few distant friends sent me books about death and dying. I received several gift cards. Some people who I thought were friends drifted away. Others tired of my emotionalism or couldn’t handle it. Overall my world got smaller.

At work, my fatigue was obvious and the sudden hot flashes were obvious. I walked out of a work event drenched in sweat, and I knew they noticed. I didn’t know what they thought until I received my first year evaluations. They wanted me to be more energetic, more vocal, more in command. I could see I was disappointing them. Was the cancer the reason? An excuse?

In my last week of radiation, I had a dream. It was a vision. A kind of digital world of blues and browns. It felt like a beach. There were crashing, faceted waves. It fluctuated, roiled, flickered. It was beautiful and strange.

I felt separated from my body. It would stay here, on the big ball of mud and rock spinning and rotating around the massive ball of fire. My energy was everywhere all the time, part of the vast, irregular network that continually causes things to pop into and out of existence.

I had the sense that I would pass on into this energistic plane, myself and not myself, part of everything, everywhere.