I died today. June 18th 1994. I am, or I guess I was, 15 years old. Today, they take my body and lay it out until the day of my funeral, June 20th. If you’re wondering how I died I have had cancer for just about my whole life, bone cancer. We tried all the stuff the doctors wanted but there really was no hope I knew that for a while I just went for my mom.

I want you to know I didn’t want to die people usual;lay say they were ready or whatever, I mean I couldn’t stand to live any more but I certainly didn’t want to die.For sure the wort part of all of my cancer was the pain for my mom. She would lay her head on my stomach and cry-sometimes so much she would begin to have a panic attack. In those moments I felt so hopeless I tried, I tried hard, but I couldn’t get enough strength to hug her or tell her it would be ok, that I am ok. I decided at 7 it would have been easier to have never been born because just my existence seemed to cause pain. I mean just look at the agony I have put my mother through.

But today I lay-Dead. And I have finally left my mother. My only family-even though she is all alone now maybe she can find some peace in my absence. Not now but in far years to come.

My mom is the first one at the funeral. She curls my wig for my last “gathering”, even though now I can’t tell her, it was my favorite when she did this for me. But as she curls it now her warm tears fall on my frozen face. She kisses my forehead like she would if I were asleep too weak to lift my head to her. Then she lays my favorite flower, a daisy, in my right hand.

After she finishes getting me ready she pulls and chair and sits next to my cold body. She looks at me like she always has, with a look that says it all, how unfair it is that I had to be sick. She looks at me this way for a while.

Then she begins to speak to me even though she believes I can’t hear her it’s still nice to have one last conversation with my mom. Between her sobs, I make out a few words.

She stutters, “I can’t, don’t know, what I’ll do.”

That’s when I know my biggest fear has come true: and there is no way I can be there for her. She has no one. I, her only person am gone and she wont be able to live the life she should have been living with her healthy daughter. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t pick this.

I lay here in this uncomfortable itchy coffin angry at myself and the world and everything I can manage to be mad at.

I need to cry but of course I can’t. I’m dead. I have been for two days. I will never stop being gone.