yum-yum cancer loves brains
like zombies
eat her memory
she has trouble remembering me
remembering the year
(When I was eight years old, I
Had the stomach flu
And threw up in the kitchen
And then in the hallway
And then twice in the bathroom
—Only hitting the sink once)
i should understand
but I can't
fluvomit does not equal rosevomit
dead already, to me
dead and gone
seventeen months of slow death
of hospitals and
hospices and
doctors and
radiation and
chemotherapy (latin For "poison")
("Honey, come close and let me see you.")
smell of death above the rosevomit
twelve and i had never smelled death before—
—but i knew
(I knew)
I know
this is what death smells like
dead already
why won't this g host leave me alone?
and let me get on with my life?
she touches me
once
on the arm
before her own arm becomes
too tired
and drops to her side
("Be strong,"
She said.)
i want to run
runscreamhide
get away
from the THING
in my mother's bed
the THING
that pretends to be her
("Be strong
And don't be afraid
And be good
For your father.")
for the father who
KILLED ME
she means
Be Good because
because "Being Good"
will protect you.
right, mom?
Being Good
Will make everything OK
right, mom?
Being Good
will mop up the puke
and wipe it from your lips.
right, Mom?
(Tears in my eyes.
"Don't cry,"
She said.
I hated her
For it.
I could cry
I could cry
No one could
Stop me.
I had the right.)
("Honey?"
Weak and confused.
"Come closer."
I had stepped back
"Honey?"
Weak and confused.)
not my mother
my mother was not weak and confused
i will not let that be my mother
and i leave i walk away
from the rosevomit.
but i turn to her
one last time
and I say:
"Fuck off and die."
Seventy-nine
AND SHE DID. THAT NIGHT.
Dear Neil,
I have a secret to tell you.
I haven't sent any of these letters to you.
You don't know that because, well, I haven't sent them. So you don't know they exist, so you can't miss them.
Which is weird, because you would think that the opposite of you not knowing I didn't send them would be you knowing I didn't send them. But it isn't in this case. And that's strange.
So why did I write these letters if I never sent any of them? Wow. That's a long story, but I'll tell it anyway.
It all started in the hospital, when I was DCHH. In my first session with Dr. Kennedy. It was a long session.
Time is a funny thing in the hospital. In the mental ward. You lose track of it easily. I mean, they keep things pretty regimented, but you still lose track of time. Because every day is the same, pretty much. And between the drugs and the sameness, it's easy to forget the hour, the day, the month.
That first session was a couple of hours. Dr. Kennedy had talked to Ms. Webber, who was my usual, court-appointed therapist, the woman I'd been seeing for years, ever since I tried to kill myself by slitting my wrists the wrong way. I didn't like Webber. She was too cheery. She was too upbeat.
Kennedy, though ... Right from the moment I met him, I could tell he was different. He was no-nonsense. He wasn't upbeat. He wasn't downbeat, either. I wish there was a word for what he was. I guess the word should be beat (ha, ha), but that's not it.
He was a realist, I guess, even though that doesn't say it all.
So partway through that first session, Kennedy suddenly says, "You hate your mother."
And I was like, "Shut the eff up. I don't hate my mother. I hate my father. And she's dead anyway."
And he dropped it, but he kept coming back to it, circling it like ... Like ... You know how you can have something in, say, the bathtub? Like a sponge? And you pull the plug and the water starts to drain out and you figure the sponge would head straight for the drain, but instead it takes its time getting there and when it does get there, it circles for a while before finally hitting the drain? You know what I mean?
That's how Kennedy was. He took his time. And eventually he got there.
"I don't hate my mom," I told him again.
"I think you do. That's what I'm hearing. A lot of anger. And that's perfectly fine. It's OK to be angry. It's OK to hate."
He was the first adult—hell, the first person—in my life who told me that it was OK to feel those emotions. The first person who didn't try to get me to swallow them or purge them. That was when I knew—that was how I knew—that I'd been right, that Kennedy really was different.
"So you hate her," he went on.
And I had to admit it. "Yeah. I guess." It felt bad and good at the same time to say it. I wasn't sure if God existed or not (still not sure, if you want to know the truth), but I figured that there was a pretty good chance he'd strike me dead right there for saying that.
"Why do you have trouble saying it?" he asked me.
And, like, duh! "Because it's bad. It's wrong."
"Because she left you," he said. "I'm not saying you always hated her. Just when she got sick. Right when you needed her the most."
"It's not like she had a choice," I told him. And I felt like complete shit, because he was right. He was right, it was true, and the truth made me look like such a weak, pathetic, self-absorbed, selfish bitch.
"She didn't have a choice," I said again. "Roger's the one who smoked. She just got cancer."
"But you blame her for it."
"No."
"Then why do you hate her? Why are you so angry?"
"I don't know. I don't want to talk about this." I still had the Bangs of Doom at that point, so I sort of flipped them over my eyes and sank down into my chair, and I figured that was that.
But he just leaned back in his chair and said, "I have an idea, Kyra. It's going to sound a little bit strange, but I'd like you to play along, OK?"
So, here's another secret. I'm just full of secrets today, huh?
The other secret is what Dr. Kennedy said next. His big idea.
See, I wasn't supposed to be writing letters to you in the first place anyway.
Kennedy wanted me to write letters to my mom. He's a pretty smart guy, but you know what? I thought that was a pretty stupid idea. Especially for such a smart guy. Because my mom is dead.
"The letters aren't for her, Kyra. They're for you."
Well, that's fine and all, but it's still stupid. What's the point of writing a letter to someone who will never, ever get to read it?
So I thought about it. Because he asked nicely. When we finished up that session, I went back to my room and blocked out the psycho-bitch roommate and thought about it. I'm not dumb, you know. I know that I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I'm not an idiot either. I just don't like school. I don't like sitting there all day while peopl
e who think they're smarter than me blather on and on and on. It's not that my teachers are smarter than me. They've just memorized more. Which is no big deal, especially because they're older and they've been to college and stuff, and you have to memorize all kinds of shit in college.
So I thought about it. (Huh. I started two paragraphs the same way.) And I got the point of the letters—it's supposed to help me work shit out, sort of like therapy, only with just me talking.
I was OK with the idea of writing letters. I don't mind writing. I used to write really bad, really shitty poetry, right around when Mom died. So writing is fine.
But I decided that I couldn't write to Mom. And I sure as hell wouldn't write to my dad, because he's alive and if I wanted to say something to him, I would just go say it, you know?
And I thought about you, Neil. About your work. About how much I love it. Because it's like you only have your own life, you know, but it's like you understand other people's lives. That's just amazing.
So I thought and I thought, and I thought, I'll write to Neil Gaiman. That's what I'll do. Because if anyone in the world could understand what I'm thinking and feeling, I bet it would be him.
Originally, I was going to write e-mails even though Dr. Kennedy said I should write actual letters. He's old school, I guess. I wasn't going to do that, though. E-mail is fine. But they only let us use the computer for, like, an hour a day in the hospital and there's always someone looking over your shoulder and there's no e-mail anyway, so I decided I would have to do actual letters. And since I was going to do that, I figured I might as well go all the way and actually write them by hand, with pen and paper, like in the old days.
Whew. Now that I'm home, I write these on my computer, but it's still tiring. Especially this one, which is really, really long.
I didn't believe in this letter-writing idea at first, but I have to admit—it's helped me think about things. It's helped me organize my thoughts.
When I first read Sandman and I first saw the whole goth thing, something about it spoke to me and I couldn't help it. I thought that if I did it and did it my way, then it would mean something different from what it does for the rest of the world. But it didn't matter. Everyone just saw the black and they thought goth and they didn't get it. So now I've done something more extreme. Something my own.
And then, of course, other people copy me.
But, you know what? That's OK. Because I've realized that maybe I don't care about that. And that they can't copy me if they don't know what to expect.
It's weird, Neil. Because your work has meant so much to me ever since I discovered it. It was like a special herb or bandage I found right when I was hurt and sick and needing it the most. And I loved it. It helped me. And now I wonder if I ever really understood it. Part of it is Fanboy and Cal talking about it, I guess. Like, did you really mean to end Sandman sooner than you did? What stories would we not have gotten if you'd stuck to your original plan? Dream Country? A Game of You? What would have gone away and never been told?
Or would you have told all the same stories, just shorter? In that case, which details would have been lost?
But the more I think about that, the more I realize it doesn't matter. Because the lesson I get from all of this is that you didn't have it all figured out from the start. You rolled with the punches.
And maybe that's what I need to do.
I learned a lot from reading your comics. From thinking about them.
But it's weird, because tonight I learned a lot from another comic book. It wasn't one of yours, but it had some of your characters in it.
Here's the thing: In your comics, Death (you know, the big D, like my cup-size, LOL) is comforting and cool. And that's great.
But that's just Death herself. It's not death (with a little d), the actual, you know, event. You made her up and she's the person or the thing or the whatever that helps us get through the door from being alive to being dead, right? She isn't actually being dead, right? I think I've got this straight.
That Captain Atom comic made me realize that actually being dead might not be all comforting and calm, you know? Even if a nice person with a perky smile and a cool outfit greets you. Being dead might actually suck. It might be a lot of work. And if that's the case, then maybe ... maybe I should do the work here and now, while I'm alive, so that maybe someday—like a million years from now—I can relax and enjoy being dead.
That's sort of what I learned tonight.
Oh. One last secret:
This will be the last time I write to you.
I'm not sending this one, either.
Dear Mom,
It's been a while. Sorry I haven't written until now.
It's so late at night that it's early in the morning. I did something pretty stupid tonight (or last night, I guess) and I got caught. don't worry. It's all going to work out.
Still, I was up for hours talking to Dad and then I did some writing to someone else and now I'm writing to you. I'm going to have to get some sleep soon, but I wanted to write this while I was thinking it.
And wow. Now that I'm actually sitting here at the computer, typing, I don't know what to say. Dr. Kennedy was right—it's a good idea to write to you. But it's also scary. Because there's so much to say. And I don't want to get it wrong, which is weird because you're dead, so it's not like I can really send this to you. It's not like you can really read it.
But maybe you can. I feel like you can. Like you can read it while I write it. Is that weird? Probably.
I'm OK with weird, though. If you've been watching over me since you died, you know that I'm OK with weird.
I'm sorry, Mom.
I'm crying while I'm typing this. I want to tell you that so you'll understand if there are any typos.
I'm sorry.
Not just for saying what I said the last time I saw you. Not just for that.
I'm sorry for hating you.
I hated you before you died and then you died and I really hated you after that.
I'm sorry.
One time you told me that the opposite of love isn't hate. And I didn't understand that, but I think I do now. Because if you hate someone, you must still care, right? You have to care a little bit; otherwise you would just ignore them and forget they even live. Or lived.
So maybe ... Look, I'm sorry I hated you, but maybe—once you died—maybe that was my way of keeping you alive.
I think it was easier to hate you. Like, if I hated you, then I didn't have to be so sad. And that was better for me.
But even though I hated you, I still loved you. So I guess it's possible to love and loathe at the same time. It's like when you were dying, I was all, "Thank God she's dying" and "What am I going to do without her?" at the same time.
Does that make any sense?
It makes a weird sort of sense to me.
I only let myself think of the bad things. The times you criticized me. The times you made me change clothes when I liked my outfit the way it was. The times you made me do things I didn't want to do, things I didn't see any sense in doing. It was easier to think of those things and hate you.
So when I sat down to write this letter, I forced myself to think of my favorite memory of you. I wouldn't let myself start until I had that memory, until it was strong and bright and bold in my mind.
I thought it would take a long time, but it didn't. Once I let it, it popped right into my head.