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But anyway, little Henry, I kept it from him for a long time, because I didn’t think he would get it. But then, eventually, I went from having five hours a day to three hours to one to none. No hours I can have out of bed. I’m typing this propped up in my bed on a laptop, but I know that doing this for too long will exhaust me, so I have to be sparing about how often I add to my little memoir or whatever it is I’m writing.

Maybe it’s a confession, Leo.

Forgive me, Leo, for I have sinned.

Fuck.

Anyway, eventually, I had to explain to Henry. It’s funny, because I think we always think that children, especially really small children, can’t handle terrible truths, but I think we underestimate them.

He took it all in stride.

He cried, and he said that he didn’t want me to die, and I cried and I said I didn’t want to die either, and he gave me a hug, and he said, “I’m so sorry, Mommy, I’m so sorry.”

For days afterwards, he would sometimes pipe up with things. “Can’t you go to a doctor, Mommy? Can’t a doctor give you medicine?”

I would tell him the doctors had tried all the medicine that they could, but that none of it had worked.

I could tell this was a blow, that some part of him had hoped that doctors were infallible, that medicine fixed everything, and I could see his little three-year-old brain rearranging this information and now he was viewing the world differently, and he now knew the world was a worse place than he had thought before.

I knew that this was why we don’t tell children hard truths. We like to keep them ensconced in a more beautiful world for as long as possible. We don’t want them to have to go through the pain. We want to protect them.

He had other things to ask. Could I shift into a wolf and get fixed that way? Could I go to a hospital and get better there? Would I be a ghost and knock things over after I died? Couldn’t I just take a really long nap and that might make me better?

He had these ideas for days and days, and I realized he was in his own tiny-little-boy denial. He didn’t want to let me go.

One day, he crawled up into the bed with me and wrapped his still-chubby arms around my neck and lay his head on my shoulder, and he was very serious as he said, “I still need a mommy. You can’t die.”

I told him I wouldn’t. I lied to him. I said, “Okay, Henry, Mommy will stay here with you. I won’t die. I’ll fight to be here with you.”

I am.

I’m still fighting.

I want to get better, really better. I want to be able to get out of bed for a few hours each day for a week or two, and then increase it to a few more hours. I want to start spending whole days out on the river. I want to be able to drink a glass of wine. I want to get better and better and stop writing this stupid memoir.

I want to forget all about it, because I’m so distracted by how much better I’m getting.

I want Henry and me to go play all day at the park. I want to watch him go down the slide and hear the way he screams in delighted laughter. I want to take Jace school shopping and have him reject all my clothing options because he is cultivating his own too-cool style.

I want all of this to fade away, this sickness, this dread, this awful reality.

Someday, I want to find this memoir I wrote, stashed away, hidden and collecting dust. I want to laugh about it, and say, “Oh, remember when I thought I was dying? Turned out to have been a false alarm.”

I want to live.

Leo, I want to live.

I don’t care if you think I don’t deserve it, if you think I should suffer. Can’t this have been enough? Can’t this have been my penance?

Forgive me, Leo, for I have sinned.

But if you give me another chance, I promise, I will sin no more.

I don’t want to die.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I CRIED SO hard when I read it that my tears fell on the paper and it dried with all these little wavy dots on it.