I'll Never Say Goodbye

Dear Mimi, 


I listened to the same song everyday on my way home from work. Everyday, for a few months. It always made me cry. At first, I thought it was because I identified the song with your fighting spirit. There is a refrain in particular that I think of:


You keep alive a moment at a time
But still inside a whisper to a riot
To sacrifice but knowing to survive
The first to find another state of mind 
I'm on my knees, I'm waiting for a sign
Forever, whenever
I never wanna die
I never wanna die
I never wanna die
I'm on my knees
I never wanna die
I'm dancing on my grave
I'm running through the fire
Forever, whatever
I never wanna die



You fought the cancer. You cursed the cancer. You radiated the cancer and poisoned the cancer and demanded the cancer leave. You were a little conquerer, trying to take back your body. The times the cancer was on the run, you did victory dances and screamed in jubilation. When the cancer came back, you spit, you stomped, you fought ever harder. If there had been a burial plot waiting for you, you would have danced on it. Defiantly.



One day, after months of my drive-home cry, I did a 'Mimi'. I asked myself the easy question and made myself find the hard answer. Why was I crying? Every day? Of course I miss you, and of course I wanted you to stay. But listening to the same song, every day? Knowing I would cry? Every day? 


I realized it was actually a different part of the song that was worming its way through my apple heart:


I never wanna leave
I'll never say goodbye
Forever, whatever
Forever, whatever


For all your fighting, and all your defiance - I'm not sure you were ready to go. You were the most alive person I have ever known. Even when you were fighting for the last bit of life left -- especially when you were fighting. In the very end of the end, when we knew it was the end, you took your time. You baffled the medical world - you outlived every benchmark and expectation. They exhausted their tool-kits because you lived to try every tool they had.


And after so many months, I realized that I have been worried that you spent that last week screaming on the inside that you didn't want to leave, you'd never say goodbye, forever, whatever.


As soon as I admitted that to myself, the tears dried on my face. I can't know what was going through your head that week, and you couldn't tell us. But I do know that you knew, absolutely, that we loved you. I promised your still form that I would never stop loving and protecting The Little One and Dad. I whispered that I knew - in the way that I know things - that we would all be okay. And we've never talked about it, but I'm sure that they told you the same things.


We released you, because you had to go. And I released my fear about your last week, because it also had to go. 


But you'll never leave my heart, I'll never say goodbye. 


Forever. Whatever. 


Love,


A