It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a dreidel without a tabletop. Stars colliding, my world falling to pieces. Blurred lines, tears falling like snowflakes. Brittle bones crushing on the hospital floor. It's not so bad, this colorful abstract art. Go into the light. There is a sleeping child there, gripping a brown bear, beneath pink cotton sheets. Love coats the walls of this place. Maybe it is heaven after all. She groans and spits-up, squirms and pitches. It's another girl for you. She's a baby. She has your nose. Daddy is dead. But Lily is alive. She is shiny, like chrome. But she is in pain. See how her stomach turns. It's ok baby. I've got you.
She could tell I was faking it.