Page 77 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

I picked up the volume marked seventeen and started flipping through it. An hour flew by, and I realized I wasn’t flipping. I was reliving the year that my mother died, one painful diary entry at a time. I put it down and fished out another item of major significance that was stashed in my burn box. It was meant to be burned, but only a little at a time. A bag of loose joints.

I lit one, drew the smoke into my mouth and sucked in more fresh air as I inhaled. It was just another one of the little tricks Johnny Rollo had taught me to increase the potency of the hit.

And then I pulled out a second box. My legacy box. The private stuff I wanted to be kept and judiciously passed on. Reports and essays I’d written that dated back to middle school; awards I’d won;Dunn Gets It Donebuttons, bumper stickers, and other souvenirs from my campaign for mayor; and, of course, the real purpose of my trip up to the Possum Graveyard, reminders of my mother—gifts she’d given me, the eighteen-page letter she’d written, and silly things she’d saved from her mother.

I picked up the framed photo of her when she was nine months pregnant with me. “Hey, Mom,” I said. “I’m dying.”

I took another hit on the joint, and another, and sat staring at the picture until the THC slowly opened up a channel of communication between us.

“Any advice from an old pro?” I said.

“You did the right thing turning down treatment,” she said. “I wish I had.”

“I’m worried about what will happen to the kids when I’m gone,” I said.

“I know. For me, the hardest part about dying was not knowing who would step in and be there for you and Lizzie.”

“We got lucky,” I said. “Beth is one of a kind.”

“Yes, but the world is littered with Connies.”

She was right. When my mother died, my father was a bighearted, blue-collar, knock-around barkeep, and plenty of women swooped down on him. Alex, with his movie-star magnetism and his seven-figure earning potential, would attract even more. The hospital was a hotbed of nurses, doctors, technicians, and patients, all looking for husbands. Most of them were looking for the perfect happily-ever-after guy. But I knew that there’s always a handful looking for the take-him-for-all-he’s-worth guy. And if she destroyed his life and his kids along the way, that’s their problem, not hers.

I finished the last of the joint and stretched out on the attic floor, my brain in a cannabis haze. I folded my arms across my chest and stared up at the rafters. Only they weren’t rafters anymore. They were the walnut ceiling panels at Kehoe’s Funeral Home, and I was in a box, Alex and the kids dressed in black at my side.

And then they came. The perfumed piranhas in pretty print dresses, circling, moving in, angling for the best position, their noses twitching at the scent of money?—

I bolted upright. “Get out, you fucking bitches!” I screamed. “Keep your fucking claws off my fucking family!”

The sobs came in waves. “My family... my family... my family...” I whimpered.

My family. My shy, supersensitive son, who would be lost without a strong mom to help him navigate the adolescent minefield. My sensational maverick daughter, who will go off the rails without somebody she respects to rein her in. My broken-at-birth husband, who will crumble if he is abandoned yet again.

I closed my eyes, and my ears homed in on the hum of the attic fan. I breathed in the sound, and soon it went from monotone to musical. And in my head I sang along with it.

“Ain’t no mountain high enough. Ain’t no valley low enough.” My mother’s love song to my father.

When I opened my eyes, I was staring down at her picture. She looked so beautiful in her pink floral maternity dress, her eyes already glowing with the joy of motherhood, her hands gently cradling the me that was to be, safe inside her belly.

“Thanks, Mom,” I whispered, kissing her gently. I neatly packed and resealed the box and made my way downstairs, a woman empowered. A woman on a mission.

Find the next Mrs. Dunn.

FORTY-FIVE

I woke up Tuesday morning feeling painfully alone. Alex spent the night at the hospital. Lizzie was out of the country. And while the late-night séance in the attic with my mother helped give me clarity, the conversation was admittedly lopsided.

I needed to talk to another living human being. But who? Father Connelly came to mind. I remember how grateful my mother was to have him administer the sacraments, but I needed more than someone to anoint me with oil and tell me that the love of Jesus could help me make sense of my suffering.

Then there was Misty. I could almost picture her eyes welling up as I told her she was going to lose the person who had been like a sister to her. And then I imagined the meltdown that would follow when I told her I decided not to pursue standard medical protocol. I wasn’t ready to put her through that kind of pain.

There were only two people I trusted to give me the love and compassion I needed without judging me for my decision to forgo treatment. One was in London. I called the other one.

“Hey, Johnny. It’s Maggie. I wanted to see if I could catch you before you left for work.”

“You should have called me seven and a half hours ago. I’m just at the end of my shift.”

The background noise was deafening. “I can barely hear you,” I said.

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