Page 65 of Sex. Love. Marriage.

Journal, I think, no, I fear Mara dying is going to destroy us completely. It’s too much. I can’t take Noah’s silence any longer. It’s bubbling over the edge and at some point, I know I’m going to snap and this wall that’s been building is going to become indestructible. It’s hard to look at him anymore. Noah’s pain is so visible, and even though he’s trying to hide it, it’s there and raw, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I know at some point the argument is going to happen between us and I know it’s not going to be pretty.

I tried so hard to get him to talk about what happened with Oliver and Hazel, but he shut me down and refused. It was like the night Mara died all over again. It started with, “We’re buying time, Kel. We can’t do this to her anymore.” And that was the last time Noah spoke to me about Mara. Isn’t that what’s happening to us now?

Do you remember that night, Journal? I wrote about it. It’s all here. Every gory detail.

Once I write in Journal, I usually never go back and read it. But tonight, I flip back through the pages to the one I’ve never dared to read again. I don’t know why. Maybe to remember my precious blonde-haired baby girl whose life was taken too soon.

It takes me a moment to find it, but then I do, like fate, like I was supposed to read this night over again. With a deep breath, I run my fingers over the worn pages, and the ink spread over them. And then I read what I wrote that day, August 28th, the day she died.

Journal, we’re at the end. I know, you didn’t see it coming, did you? We certainly didn’t. And now, there’s no tubes or alarms any longer. There’s no point. It’s the end. Noah’s sleeping next to her after being awake for the last three days, and soon, though we don’t know when, Mara will drift away and into the unknown. I want to believe she will no longer be in pain. We should be throwing her seventh birthday party we planned for her, but instead, we’re here, in a dimly lit hospital room in Austin, holding her hands and praying for comfort. So much has happened in the last three days since her last round of chemo.

Everything was fine on Friday when we went in for a check-up. Mara had said her back was hurting so we took her in. It was four hours later they called us back and asked us to come in. We did. They handed me a box of tissues and delivered the news. Silently, this disease had spread and taken over her tiny strong-willed rebel body. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew since Mara started swelling on the right side of her body. Up until now, since we found out she had cancer six months ago, we’d been doing everything on her treatment plan, including surgery to remove the tumor in her thigh bone. But when osteosarcoma spreads, it usually goes to your lungs. In Mara’s case, it spread so rapidly there was nothing we could do to stop it. Now we’re here, a tumor in her chest so large it’s pushing on her heart, lungs, and airway.

“I’m so sorry. We could try to fight this, but the chance of Mara making it even through the next couple days is very slim.”

The blinding hope that maybe we would be given a miracle, it turned to no hope. We were done. There would be no more treatments and injections. No stem cell transplants. No more vomiting and bloody noses and hair loss and major surgeries where they cut apart her body to save her. The cancer had won. No matter what we did from here on out, it was the end. It was going to take her life from her.

The child life specialist, Vivian, she tells me, “God has a greater plan for her.”

Noah glares at her. “Fuck that,” he says, leaving the room. The way the door slams shut, it hurts.

I look to Mara, her eyes closed, her breathing quick and rapid.

I agree. It’s bullshit. I don’t want comfort. I want my fucking daughter to live. I want her to ride a bike and play and be everything she can be because she deserves it. She doesn’t deserve this awful disease that’s torn our lives apart and sucked all the life from hers. Now she’s skin and bones, no hair, and barely able to lift her head. Her shocking blue eyes, they’re gone. Even when she opens them, it’s not the same. I see it. She’s dying.

I hate. So much. It’s raging through me to the point that I want to lash out and destroy. I want to slam my fists into the window outside her room just to feel pain other than the emotionally draining ones inside me. I want so badly to cause physical pain on something, I’m shaking.

Vivian touches my shoulder. “I know this is hard. But you have to stay calm.”

They’re worried I’m causing too much stress to my unborn child. But how can I even worry about that when my first-born daughter is dying in front of me? How is this fair? It’s not. It never will be!

I scowl at her. “Have you lost a child, Vivian? Do you even know what this is like or are you just here because the hospital says you should be? I don’t want to be your job. I just want to hold her and tell her it’s going to be okay even if it’s not.”

I feel like an asshole when she says, “My two-year-old son to neuroblastoma.”

I don’t say anything. I stare at Mara next to me, her hand in mine.

Vivian rubs my shoulder. “Talk to her. Make her feel comfortable and that she’s not alone.”

How can I do that when there’s only anger inside me?

My heart hurts so badly. I draw in a shaky breath and continue on, knowing I shouldn’t but just this glimpse at her, it’s something.

Today’s Sunday. It’s so hot outside. The air conditioners in the hospital are working overdrive and it’s still not enough. They brought in fans to try to cool Mara off. She’s sweating so much. Her breathing has changed. It’s strained, harsh, like at any moment she’s going to choke. Tomorrow is her seventh birthday, and I fear she won’t make it through the night. They put her on oxygen and she’s no longer responsive to us. Her last words to us when we told her the cancer had spread to her chest?

“That dumb cancer.”

I cry.

Noah stares at the wall like he wants to burn a hole through it.

She’s right. It’s dumb and something a child should never have to go through. A pain parents shouldn’t know, but here we sit with her, praying for comfort. The child life specialist, Vivian, talks with Oliver and Hazel, though I’m not sure they understand what she meant by any of it. Oliver asks, “When will she die?”

Noah sits beside me, not touching, not talking, but it’s then his body hunches forward, his sobs racking through him.

I hate that question because I don’t want to think about my baby dying while I’m ready to give birth to her sister any day now. She tells the kids that every child has a puzzle, and we’re all pieces to Mara’s puzzle. Once Mara has all the pieces to her puzzle, she will pass on.

I can’t take this pain. My heart is so heavy, so sad, so… I don’t know.

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