In October, Kelly came to her in a dream. She had been watching Instagram videos by hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos, and recognizing he was dead, a jolt of fear ran through her. It prompted the urgent question, "Am I dying?"

Kelly's gaze met hers with unsettling clarity. "God likes me better than he likes you," he said.

Her anxiety mounting, she asked again, "Am I dying?"

With a smirk, he repeated, "God likes me better than he likes you."

Defeated, she exhaled, "Listen, I've tried my best. I've done the best I can with my life. I can't help who God likes better... I can't influence God's preferences..."

Then, the dream dissolved.

Awakening, she regretted her passive acceptance of Kelly's taunts. Perhaps there was truth in his claim of divine favor, it seemed plausible enough. She felt sorry for herself, thinking, "This is the person that comes to take me to the next space. Everyone else gets a loved one who caringly helps with the transition, I'm stuck with one who tries to provoke me by telling me that he is God's favorite." 

 She knew COVID-19 was dangerous in late January when she heard a man in Wuhan, China, share his experience on the radio. He sounded like he was crying as he described being locked down in his home with the body of his uncle who had died of the disease. By late February, there were reports of numerous local outbreaks so she went pandemic shopping at the grocery store and bought food and supplies to last a few weeks. On March 12, it was announced that the local schools would close for the indefinite future and everyone should stay at home and shelter in place.

During the same period, she struggled with her health. She had been going to doctors since October trying to find answers for her swollen lymph nodes and lack of energy. By mid-February, the doctors were grooming her for a cancer diagnosis. On March 13, the first day that schools were closed, they slit her neck open and took a lymph node to biopsy. And shortly after that it was confirmed--she had lymphoma.

To get a cancer diagnosis during a worldwide pandemic feels very personal--like death is stalking you. No part of life was normal. Certainly not her life, but also not the lives of work colleagues, friends, or even strangers on the street. Everything was changed. In the New York metro area, where she lived, a lot of people began to die. There were so many bodies, they brought in trailers to store them in. By her first chemo treatment on April 6th, there were over 21,000 dead in NYC and 12,000 more dead in New Jersey.

During her chemo treatments, sometimes a song would come on over the speakers, a fragment of "Here Comes the Sun." "A COVID-19 patient is being released from the hospital," explained a nurse, "They play it to celebrate."

July 20th was her 6th and final chemo treatment. She was in remission, but no one knew if she would stay there. The novel coronavirus was still in the world, so the world was still in the grip of the pandemic. It seemed like everyone lived in fear.  Spending so much time with the thought of death, she started making art, drawing images of what people left behind when they died--a cup, an artwork, a piece of clothing. It was a way to make meaning, perhaps. Or it was a way to avoid thinking too much about who she would leave behind--her son, husband, mother--and how her death would hurt them. And her inability to make things different. 

3 Women Internal to One Person

She found a note from 2003:

3 Women Internal to One Person

Youngest: Dragging a bench through the wilderness with a 12-day walk ahead. Leaves it, but will go back to get it. The youngest is intrepid, physically strong, independent but also part of a group, of simple nature, a stranger (foreigner) in the group, (the wood nurse), not money oriented, can't afford things but is still drawn to them, loves fun (the pen with a bouncy ball at the end), connected to natural world, male father figure she loves, trusts and leans upon. She is quiet. No reason to talk, she is content with the world and talking disturbs things. She will say "bye" to be polite.

Middle: She is the connection between 2 others, a conduit. They could not connect without her. Like Beatrice in Dante, showing way between, not much known about her otherwise. She brings young to help old. Middle seems to believe she understands things about young that young does not see (but this belief may not be true), i.e. "you get (so) overwhelmed by things, you don't talk especially in the morning." This is a misinterpretation of youthful experience, a devaluing. Does not ring true to young experience.

Older: At "party," a social gathering that turns out to be a funeral. She is somewhat hysterical. Social situation is bad--groups of people are ill and others are afraid of catching the illness so the ill are ostracized. Art is bad, over commercialized (instantly brought to mass market--good at first, but now affecting nature of primary art.) Also, technology seems to be influencing primary relation to art. Social situation is impacting individual, making her prone to hysteria and immaturity. She's ready to harvest from young to get new material without understanding why what young has to offer has more "value" to her than what she currently has. She wants to _use_ it, rather than dive into it in a way that could nourish her, in a way she could learn from it and use that lesson to enliven her own work or the works of others. She wants to commercialize it, making it a part of the system that has already caused problems. She doesn't see that _this_ is the problem. She's too caught up in it. The middle understands that the old needs to touch base with the young to find her balance again. Old age has not brought maturity. Instead,old is too caught up in influences of social community. She is absorbed by it.

She dreamt of Kelly last night. He was alive and working at a CVS. She had seen him at the CVS, but didn't realize it, because she had looked him in the eye, looked at him closely enough to note the black earbuds he was wearing and his frizzy hair, and had not recognized him.

She had gone to visit Kelly's dear friend Eric. As she left Eric's place, she saw the man from CVS in the driveway. He was calling out to Eric to tell him that he had seen her at the CVS and he was so happy. He was happy to have seen her even though she didn't recognize him.

And that is when she did recognize him. And they embraced. And he was alive. It was confusing that he was standing there alive, but she was so happy to see him. They were so happy to see each other.
 
When she awoke it was that feeling that haunted her, that he was so happy to see her. And it made her cry even though he'd been dead for almost 30 years The dream had made his happiness seem as real to her as her own.

Her little cat, Phoenix, became ill. Despite trips to the vet, he got worse and worse. His eating slowed, he became thinner and thinner. In the last days, his legs stopped working well. He'd sway when he got up, and she would run to catch him. On his last night, he slept in the bed with her, and Stuart, and Jeremiah. They all slept together, a heap of animals trying to comfort one another.

The next morning, Phoenix's breath became labored. As Stuart held him in his arms, he began his death rattle. His little back leg started to swat at Stuart, so that he could be put down and left alone in his final moments. It was physical, this dying, and difficult. They sat near him, until it was over.  They took him back to the vet for a last visit and, after saying goodbye, left him there to be cremated.

She found herself walking into a courtyard. There was a little fire, and as she approached the smoke became blacker and heavier. She saw Phoenix with his head in the smoke. "Little kitty!" she said, "Stop! You'll get smoke inhalation!"

As soon as she said it, he raised his head to look her in the eye.  And then he took a step. With the step, he swayed, and seeing the sway she remembered that he had died.

The smoke was so heavy, it was choking her. She and her family were in danger! Her eyes opened, and she was in bed. One breathe, then another, then another. The sense of smoke dissipated, it had been part of the dream.

She cried.

She wrote:

"Today is the anniversary of your death. Do you remember, when you were alive, telling me what you thought death might be like? I remember. I was so young, and growing up in Missouri. I hadn’t met anyone inclined to dream strange dreams and share them. That night it was as if the universe cracked open—I had found someone like myself. It was the first time in my eighteen years of life. I had thought I was the only one.

That night you said to me, 'Maybe when you die you are like a shell on a sandy beach. And you lie there reliving your life over and over. So your afterlife may be heaven or it may be hell. It depends on how you live your first life.'

2011 – 1989 = so many years. Twenty-two years.

If you are on some shore, reliving your life for a second time, we are together. We have just met. We are courting—those lovely wonderful days. Maybe we are near that night when you told me what you thought death might be like.

We have difficult times ahead. But we have wonderful times ahead, too. And I love you, I love you, I love you. I am too damn young in 1985. So silly, so selfish I don’t even realize it. And you, you are awful, too. Awful and brilliant and young. Too young to have had your life end so early.

Kelly , on your shore, at your 22^nd birthday. Happy birthday, love. I am there with you, as a young girl. As your true love getting drunk on gin in a parking garage, listening to The Doors in your attic room, making out on a blanket on a patch of grass by a country road."