Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

by Stephen Jenkinson

What is the truth that this girl and everyone else in her boat deserve? Is the truth that our vast med-tech arsenal isn’t vast enough, and never will be, to prevent what is happening from happening? Is it that our understanding of life doesn’t include our life ending? Is the truth that no one believes that a dying eight-year-old girl is having whatever is usually meant by “a full life”? Is it that she is proof positive that life is arbitrary, chaotic, random mayhem interrupted by seductive periods of nothing much happening? Is the truth that her parents don’t believe in what is happening to her, and don’t believe in any ability she might have to carry the knowledge of what is happening to her, and don’t believe that she can be a child and be dying at the same time? Is it that she will be lost to them, that someday not too long from now she’ll be home movies and teddy bears and a room upstairs too hard to visit, that she’ll be mostly past tense? What is the truth that is this eight-year-old girl’s right? What truth do the rest of us think we know?