Someone Else's Bucket List

by Amy T. Matthews

There was something about the shadows cast by the cancer that made her love shimmer brightly, hotly, as pure as a gas flame. It was a jet. And the words I love you didn’t do the feeling justice. Nothing in the world could tell them how she felt.

Fear tended to come late at night, when the corridors were quiet and the wind shuddered at the windows. A fear so airless and cold that it was like deep space. Chemo had taught Bree that fear was an emotional black hole. It had gravity so dense it not only pulled you in, it pulled you inside out. It was best to avoid it. To deny it. To chart a course in the opposite direction.

Grief was like weather: it had seasons and moods, and it could always take a turn for the worse.

That was the thing about death, it put someone out of reach forever. You could never, ever ask them a question, ever again.

But champagne is like art: there’s no right or wrong, it’s all personal taste.

She would love her sister until her last breath. But the love that remained was sad in the same way the end of fall was sad. Transformation wasn’t always good. Spring and summer had flown, and winter was falling like a long shadow. She hurt. All the time. Like she had a phantom limb that ached and ached, even though it wasn’t there anymore.

“Please don’t waste this. Enjoy it. Even if you’re terrified. You can be more than one thing. I am.” That sad smile again. “I’m scared and sad and also full of gratitude and joy. I’m all the things at once. And that’s life, Smurfette. Being everything at once and not trying to fix it. Or escape it.”

“Number one hundred says fall in love . . .” Bree’s voice was slurring now. Whatever medication she’d taken was having its full effect. “It doesn’t say they have to love you back.” Her eyelids were growing heavy. “Because you can’t control that bit. And loving is good. Whether you’re loved back or not.”