Ever since writing my report on Ancient Egypt in the fourth grade, I have been making outlines to organize my thoughts and prepare to put them on paper. My teacher put transparent sheets on a projector and we copied down the proper format, Roman numerals first, capitalize your heading, indent, then capital letters, indent, numbers, indent, lowercase letters. We stopped at lowercase letters because, really... How much lower can you go?

Even in college, I used outlines. Outlines for essays and papers, projects. So why not this? Why can't I organize the cancer experience into the neatness and conformity of an outline? I will try, but I will not know what to put under the final heading, the one I usually label "Conclusion."

"Conclusion" with a capital 'C.'

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I. Finding Out

A. Symptoms

1. I'm feeling achy and sick all the time, like I have the flu. But that isn't right for May. I can't run as fast when I exercise in the morning and the fatigue and soreness linger like a fog around my body.

2. Food doesn't stay down like it should.

3. Logan asks me if I'm okay. I look pale.

4. Ororo says the same thing. Maybe I should go see Jean she says. Maybe I should.

B. Testing ...

1. I tell Jean how I've been feeling. She smiles and says that I'm getting older, it's probably natural aging. I don't think there is anything natural about this kind of weakness.

2. Blood tests make her nervous. Jean scrambles for words.

3. Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, a machine so expensive that most hospitals don't even have one. We do, though, and I'm inside it, staring at the curved surface above me. I had to take off my wedding ring and Logan's dog tags. That made me more nervous than I already was.

4. Jean looks sick, like me, staring at the MRI. She is poking a nail at brig on the film, spots that shouldn't be there. For a second, I'm jealous. She is aging beautifully, like Audrey Hepburn.

5. Jean shows me the film. The spots are in my bones. She says she is sorry, sorry I have cancer.

C. Alone.

1. I have bone cancer I say to myself in front of my mirror. I think "bone cancer" needs to be capitalized. Bone Cancer.

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II. Spreading The News

A. Logan.

1. My husband is in the nursery of all places.

2. I would laugh if it didn't hurt my heart so much. I would laugh because he is sitting on an overturned milk crate, hunched over a table with a checkerboard painted on the top. Our son and daughter, seven-year-old fraternal twins, are sitting across from him, whispering to each other, trying to figure out their next move. They're red.

3. Logan is smiling behind the hand that he has over his mouth. One eyebrow is quirked in amusement at their concentration. He sees me and the smile comes out from behind his hand.

4. We need to talk.

B. Telling him.

1. He says What, like he didn't hear me. I say again I'm sick. Very sick. Cancer. Bone Cancer.

2. He says No, no, no.

3. He sinks down onto the bed, cradles his head in his hands.

4. He wraps his arms around my waist. I can feel a pain that is not from the bones decaying inside my body.

C. William and Viola.

1. We named the kids from our reading. I named Will after Mr. Darcy from Pride & Prejudice, subtracting the "Fitz-" from the front of William. Logan named Viola after the Twelfth Night heroine. He knew that was my favorite play.

2. I once asked him, after the names were safely on the birth certificates What did you really want to name her? Phaedra, he said, but he thought that was too tragic. Plus, I added, with a name like that, she'd have to be a supermodel or an actress.

3. Seven-year-olds don't react like you expect them to when you tell them you're sick. No tears, only questions. Mama, how long are you going to be sick? Why? What can we do to make it better? What can they do? Stay unafraid.

D. Close friends.

1. Scott, Ororo, Remy, and the Professor are reserved. They understand what is going on. They know that Bone Cancer is very bad. Ororo clasps her elbows, Scott grips his knees, Remy pinches the hard bridge of his nose, Charles rubs his chin. They are testing the bones they can feel through the skin. Healthy bones.

2. Jubilee keeps her sunglasses on.

3. Kitty can't help but cry.

4. Bobby is quiet, as is his way.

5. St. John is, too.

E. Students.

1. My students, all levels of english, are quietly stunned. Some understand the gravity of my condition, others expect me to be back. I do not know what to expect.

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III. First We'll Try Chemo.

A. The Low-Down.

1. Jean explains to me how advanced the cancer is. She wants to try chemotherapy and start out strong. She thinks I can take it.

2. Logan asks snappy questions like Will it hurt? and Will it work?

3. The answers are Yes, it will, I'm sorry and I don't know. There is a 50/50 chance.

4. We will start in two days.

5. I will have treatments twice a week, more than is normal. This cancer is bad.

6. Will, will... That is my son's name.

B. Treatment #1.

1. The IV hurts going in. My skin turns ugly purple-yellow in the crook of my elbow. I hate to look at it because it seems as though my skin has begun to anticipate the outcome of my Bone Cancer. It looks as if it has begun to rot.

2. The saline is first.

3. Benadryl.

4. Zoloft.

5. Taxol, liquid fire, burning at the point of entry, racing up your arm and through your body as if your blood were gasoline.

C. Aftermath.

1. Logan held my hand for the first round of treatment.

2. Now he cradles me, small, shrinking me curled up on a low bed in a curtained- off recovery room, my back to his chest.

3. I feel his arms carefully wrapped around my heaving stomach. I'm so sick. There is a trash can next to the bed.

4. I can feel the wetness of his tears on my neck, through my hair.

5. Jean said my hair will probably fall out.

6. She said I could wear a wig.

D. Treatment #2

1. IV, saline, Benadryl, Zoloft, Taxol, nausea, Logan's arms around me, tears on my neck, scalp sweating, feeling cold, arm aching where the IV was, vomiting in the trash can beside the low recovery-room bed.

E. Treatment# ????

1. The symptoms don't get any better.

2. My hair falls out slowly at first, then faster. A pretty brown wig with silver streaks fits comfortably on my naked skull. I could have been blonde. Or a redhead.

3. I lose weight.

4. William and Viola are getting very scared.

5. Logan is getting scared and so am I.

F. Results.

1. The cancer doesn't leave, only grows smaller.

2. Everyone is scared.

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IV. Let's Try Radiation.

A. The Low-Down.

1. We're going to try radiation says Jean. She can administer it but not here. We have to go to a hospital in New York.

2. Cancer is cancer says the nurse on duty. No one deserves it.

3. They explain that I will still feel sick, but it will not burn, like the Taxol.

B. Treatment #1

1. Lying on the table, surrounded by invisible radiation, I imagine what it would sound like. Tiny clicking atoms trying to fix me.

2. They didn't lie. I am in no pain.

3. I wish there was glass so I could see Logan watching.

4. We didn't want the children to be afraid of hospitals. They are playing checkers with Jubilee and St. John in the waiting room.

C. More Treatments.

1. It is the same every time: clicking atoms, no glass, and checkers in the waiting room.

2. Scott unclenches and lets me drink wine coolers on the ride home because that's all I feel like after a treatment.

3. I'd be in Hell without those goddamned wine coolers.

D. Results

1. The cancer shrinks but it does not leave.

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V. Give It A Rest

A. Other courses of action.

1. Another round of chemotherapy may be effective suggests Jean as Logan and I sit in her office. I can tell she hates telling us this. I know she cries in her room at night, just like I do.

2. Give it a rest I tell her. I don't want to spend the rest of my days suspended in a state of half-concious nausea.

3. Logan doesn't look at me because he doesn't want the look in his eyes to make me try again.

B. A good night's sleep.

1. I don't wake up in sweats and I don't have nightmares.

2. I wake up in the morning with the sun shining through my window and Logan with a breakfast tray, our twins with arms full of movies.

3. I eat breakfast--plain toast and two wine coolers--and watch cartoons with my children and my husband, all of us piled on the bed.

4. I wear the scarf on my head that Logan kissed me through once, before we could touch.

C. Feeling good.

1. I feel better and better every day, still not strong, but better.

2. MRIs do not lie: Bone Cancer still wreaks havoc.

3. My hairs is growing back in wispy brown hairs, silver in front.

D. Fear and collective sobs.

1. One week after the last radiation treatment, we tell Will and Viola that my sick body cannot be fixed. They cry and won't speak to Jean. They thought she could fix anything.

2. Jean looks almost as sick as me. Scott is pallid, Ororo leans on Remy's arm. Even Charles can't conceal his grief. And I'm not even dead yet.

3. Jubilee, Kitty, Bobby, St. John, they all cry, too.

4. I suggest that we all heave one collective sob for me and be done with it. Who wants to spend all of their time crying anyway?

5. Every night, we all eat dinner together. I eat toast and drink wine coolers and try to eat what I can. My real nourishment is in the form of soul food. Every night, I am surrounded by my friends and their children and my husband and my children, soaking up all of the love they feel for me and the happy stories that we can share.

6. I laugh with them because laughing doesn't hurt at all anymore.

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VI. No One Can Fix Everything.

A. A suggestion.

1. After the kids are asleep in their bedroom, Logan whispers something in my ear.

2. Do I have the strength to make love?

3. I do and we do, in the shower, in our bed, until I'm falling asleep in his arms.

4. I ask him if he felt like he was doin' it with a skeleton.

5. He says I only saw you, Marie and runs his hands through my boy-short hair.

6. Wherever it is I'm going, I will miss him.

B. Another suggestion.

1. He asks me over toast and strawberry wine coolers if I will let him heal me.

2. The answer is 'no.'

3. I've done it before, he says, pleading, when you caught that shrapnel a few years ago...

4. I lost control because I was almost dead. I didn't let him do it, although I probably would have. Sudden, unnatural death calls for a sudden, unnatural rescue from it.

5. I love you, I say, but I can't let you do that. This is what is supposed to happen. No one can fix everything.

6. Neither of us finishes our toast, but the wine coolers are sucked dry.

C. Children.

1. I spend as much time as I can with Will and Viola.

2. We read books, watch movies, walk outside and pick up the last of the fallen leaves. There are very few good ones because most are a dry, crinkly brown.

3. Wherever it is I'm going, I will miss them, too.

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VII. See You.

A. Weakening.

1. I have to stay in bed most of the day. Jean wants to move me downstairs but I want to stay in the room. Jean doesn't argue. She's just glad my twins are speaking to her again.

2. An IV tree is brought up, and a cart with supplies on it, a heart monitor.

3. I keep eating because Logan eyes beg me to hang on.

4. Everyone visits me, but not for too long. I can't take it and neither can they.

B. Hanging on.

1. I'm strong, I know that, but even I can't stay around forever.

2. Hanging on is getting harder.

3. I try not to cry when my children read to me. How funny that our roles are reversed. They read Dr. Seuss, which is what I used to read to them.

4. Logan reads Twelfth Night out loud. His voice sounds so wonderful. I will miss his voice.

5. He is stronger than me and holds on tight to the half of my soul that is his.

C. Whispers in the dark.

1. It is night.

2. There is no moon.

3. I know something about this night.

4. I hugged my children as hard as I could and told them I loved them.

5. I gave Logan a stack of letters I had written to everyone I could think of.

6. Some had extra pages, things I had thought of later.

7. He holds my hand in the dark.

8. He whispers I love you, over and over.

9. I whisper it, too, but my whisper fades, fades, fades.

10. It is almost lost in the dark, but he hears it.

D. Okay to go.

1. He whispers I love you and I will miss you forever.

2. I do the same.

3. It's okay to go, he says.

4. Thank you, love. See you.

E. Alone but not really.

1. This next part I have to do all on my own.

2. But not really.

3. Logan is still holding my hand.

4. always with me

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VIII. Going On Like This

A. I can feel him let me go, but still holding my hand, and I'm just sort of floating away, but not my whole body, just what's in me, like a there's a plug in my back and it has been pulled and I'm draining out of myself, liquid and gas together floating out, filling the room. I'm wondering what will happen to my children, I'm remembering the best parts of my life and the worst and the best again and I'm thinking this is no way to end an outline but I can't help it. Soon, I'm empty of whatever was holding me to the earth and I'm spinning away now, free of my Bone Cancer and my room, the weight of the tags around my neck, the cold of the ring on my finger. I loved those last two feelings though and I will miss them. I'm going to miss my husband and my children and all of the people who loved me. I'm going to miss wine coolers and I'm sure that my heaven will have plenty of those and no toast. Suddenly I believe in Heaven. I can hear the fading sound of the heart monitor, the long wail of it as my heart stops and then the spinning speeds and blurring blurs the spinning and then there are the most beautiful colors I've ever seen, colors everywhere that I've never even heard the names of in all of my life and I'm wondering what's happening because my consciousness is just going, going, going on and on, going on like this.

Love, the world
suddenly turns, turns color