The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

by Julie Yip-Williams

I worry that she will seek to destroy all traces of me from your and the girls’ lives. I fear that she will not prioritize the girls spending time in Los Angeles so that they can continue their relationship with my family, that she will not care about preserving my legacy.

There were dramatic differences between widows and widowers, with the widowers doing all of the above much sooner than the widows. For example, 7 percent of widows engaged in a sexual encounter within one year of their spouses’ death, whereas 51 percent of widowers did the same.

When he wasn’t on duty, he would ride his motorcycle to visit my mother on Saturdays in Hoi An, a two-hour trip that he had to wait to embark on until late morning to ensure that the American and South Vietnamese forces had sufficient time to clear the roads of any land mines that might have been planted overnight by the Vietcong.

learned that no one could tell me what I could or couldn’t do, that only I could set my limitations. I learned to appreciate everything that I could do, that indeed even some people with normal vision couldn’t have traveled the world alone as I had. I learned to accept myself as I am, to be patient with and love myself.

It isn’t about figuring out how many months after my death would be appropriate. It’s about you. My death will break you. It will shatter you into a million little pieces. But I want you and you alone to fix yourself. I want you to use the opportunity to form an incredible bond with the girls that might not have been possible had I lived. I want you to figure out how to manage the kids and the apartment and your career on your own, as lonely as that may feel sometimes. Please don’t be with a woman because you need a wife or mother for your children. Know that no woman can make this easier. No woman can fix what is broken inside you. I want you to be whole again through your own doing. And only then do I believe you can find a real, healthy love, someone who is deserving and worthy of you and the girls. Who knows? She might even be someone I would have liked. I love you, sweetheart. Be well. Until we meet again…

There is no mystery at all. And yet, it is the very creation of life, that undefinable spark that begins the process, that is the miracle. And then from there, a million and one things have to go just right, and fortunately for me and as far as we can tell—knock on wood—they did with respect to my little girls.

occurrence of those million and one things in the right time sequence is a miracle. As one who was born blind, I was particularly sensitive to the delicacy of that process that seems so ordinary, how easily something small with far-reaching consequences could go wrong.

marveled at the physical aspect of the miracle of life, the feel of skin on skin, the moving limbs, the beating heart of a new life in the world that hadn’t been there seconds before.

early days. Some might call what happened to me and my life itself a miracle—that is, minus the cancer.

No, I haven’t been hoping for a miracle. I’ve already had my miracle and then some. Rather, I’ve been thinking about the notion of a miracle in the context of life itself—its beginning and ending, my beginning and ending, everyone’s beginning and ending, everyone’s miracle of life.

Some things just happen to die sooner than expected. And so, the miracle of life must end for each of us.

face death, but I knew that I wasn’t one of those people. I wanted to face my death with honesty, with eyes wide open, with understanding and courage even amid the fear, and, I hoped, with some newly gained wisdom. And so I started writing in search of my truth, to gain that understanding and wisdom of what it means to live and die, of what it is to live fully and unwind our individual miracles consciously. I discovered so many others who were secretly looking for their truths, who wanted to explore with me not just the darkness, fear, and tragedy, but also the joy and beauty of living and dying.

What happened to that woman? She was becoming an ever-distant memory, and I was sad, not for my daughters or my husband, but simply for me, for I realized that I was losing the person who I once was and whom I loved, and this dying woman, this woman who was aging at an accelerated pace, an ugly, ever-thinning creature, was taking her place. As I prepared to die and the invisible wall between me and the living grew thicker and taller, I mourned my own impending death in an ever-shrinking bubble of isolation, loneliness, and darkness.

but with eyes open, I could watch myself die. And that is no less a miracle than any other. It is hard to find the beauty in dying, but I’ve learned; I’m learning still.

What that simple act must have cost her in terms of pain endured and energy spent I can only imagine. Understanding that this was her ultimate gesture of love left me crying for days, months, and years afterward. I’ve spent the years since my diagnosis grieving and

Because of my insistence on honesty in confronting death, my girls show an emotional maturity, compassion, and appreciation for life rarely seen in children of their age.

conferences and the forcing of homework and violin practice. I have lived even as I am dying, and therein lies a certain beauty and wonder.

As it turned out, I have spent these years unwinding the miracle that has been my life, but on my terms.

Before the light goes out, I would like to say that, Second Wife, I don’t hate you. Please love the family that was mine with all your heart. Take care of them, a...

Contrary to popular belief, Antarctica is not all white. It is yellow, pink, red, and purple in the light of the quasi rising and setting sun; it is black and gray in the volcanic rock that covers the beaches where the snow has melted for the season.

and TV watching and on and on with all the stuff of life. We live every day not in the shadow of greatness and grandeur but within the confines of our small but seemingly enormous lives. It is a natural way to be; after all, we must live our lives. And then things happen that jerk us out of our complacency and make us feel small and powerless again. But I have learned that in that powerlessness comes truth, and in truth comes a life lived consciously.

I will surround myself with family and friends, as my grandmother did. I will eagerly greet the end of this miracle, and the beginning of another.

Seeing this shook me deeply, not just because I finally understood the horrifying truth that her life was almost over, but because no matter how much her body had betrayed her or how brutal a particular treatment might have been, the power of her mind had until then been entirely undiminished.

She had taken care of every last detail for me and the girls, everything except: How were we supposed to go on living without her?

When you are as sick as Julie was, deliverance becomes an act of mercy.

myself to begin to process all of it, really for the first time. Living with the constant emergency of terminal illness doesn’t give you the chance to do that. Instead, you function moment to moment, day to day, maybe week to week. Beyond that, there is no future. And then, suddenly, there was a future, slowly spreading out before us.

revelation would come in how Julie responded to her fate. For the little girl born blind, she saw more clearly than any of us. In facing the hard truth of her terminal illness, and never averting her gaze or seeking refuge in fantasy, she turned her life into a lesson for us all in how to live fully, vividly, honestly.

There was, in the end, nothing that could have been done. Moreover, in the end, the recognition of the inevitable had been an article of faith for Julie, too, and apart from leaving Mia and Isabelle, she harbored absolutely no regrets.

It is in the acceptance of truth that real wisdom and peace come. It is in the acceptance of truth that real living begins. Conversely, avoidance of truth is the denial of life.

To the degree that my book speaks truth about not just the cancer experience but the human experience in general, I want people to be able to find themselves in the writing. And in so doing, I want them to realize that they have never been and will never be alone in their suffering….I want them to find within the rich, twisted, and convoluted details of my life truth and wisdom that will bolster and comfort them through their joys and sorrow, laughter and tears.

music for their mother—Mia on violin and Belle on piano. And somewhere, Julie was listening, her eyes closed tightly, all the better to hear. I love you to eternity, sweetheart. Until I see you again.

I could not fathom circumstances that would make a person so desperate as to leave the country that had been his home since birth on a rickety fishing boat with an unclear destination. His pithy response: “You don’t understand. You eat rice and I ate salt.” My father loves his cryptic Chinese and Vietnamese sayings. No, I would never understand the suffering that compelled my parents to emigrate halfway around the world, risking their lives and their children’s lives for the nebulous promise of a better life, a good life.

But I wanted to stay a while longer because, even though I may have thought differently while in the throes of treatment, I still had a good life, a life to be proud of, a life worth living. Sometimes, I just needed to be reminded of all the goodness in my life.

Wonderful memories were made during those days, reminding me of the good life I had, filled with family who love me and whom I love.

Obviously, she inherited her musical talent from her father (who has sung in Notre Dame in Paris and Carnegie Hall in New York City), but just to think that she came from my body, that she is of my blood, the thought simply and always amazed me. I couldn’t have been happier and prouder of my daughter’s achievements, as if they were my own.

Should I ever get so audacious as to think that my life was anything less than good, I need only think of the lives that Josh and I created, and I am humbled into silence.

As we have established, I am not Pollyanna. The complicated truth is that incurable cancer did destroy my good life in certain respects, and took much from me. There can be no denying this, nor cancer’s power. But…it also augmented my life, and made me a better mother, wife, daughter, and human being. It made me more contemplative. It forced me to see the beauty that surrounds me. I made me stop. It made me notice. It told me what mattered. It told me what didn’t.