The Goodbye Process

by Mary Jones

I was nearing forty and could see for the first time all the ways I would become ugly. There was nothing on earth more terrifying to me than a twenty-one-year-old girl.

how when you die of cancer, you die piece by piece, part by part. Eleanor’s kidneys had died already. Her liver too. Waiting for the other parts, she was hooked to an IV from which liquid morphine dripped.

She was down to ninety pounds, but her body had gained a new weight.

Say, “You’ve been a good mother.” Say, “I love you, Mama.” And when they left to go to their cars later, they would each sit alone and cry before driving off to their separate homes.

She felt homesick for him. Could you miss someone you’d only just met an hour ago who had not even left yet? She guessed you could. She was going to miss him.

I could feel the years of my life passing. So much of my life seemed to be looking forward to something that never came, but now, somehow, it all seemed to be behind me.

You settle for so many things. You make so many compromises along the way that you cannot even remember what it was you actually wanted. You can almost see the outline of it in the things you have. But only almost. And you think, Okay, well, this is my life. It’s good enough, and I can make the most of it. Until you find out that what you thought was your life was just someone else’s good acting.

forcefully pushed closed the door behind him against that icy wind, I understood that hers was the heaviest door I’d ever seen, and that if I tried for one thousand years I would never know what it was like to have my hand there on that cold steel knob. And that was when I finally forgave her.

I don’t mean I am no longer young like her, or pretty like her. I mean: I am no longer human like her.