For my mother, who shaped light. EZ
They told me I was dying.
Ovarian cancer.
A flower too sacred to bloom wrong—
and yet it did.
For weeks,
I clutched fear like rosary beads,
counting each maybe,
each what if,
each not yet.
I curled into the question,
tight as a fetus—
What now?
What about my children?
“They still need me,” I said.
“They’re teenagers.
They don’t yet know how to lose a mother.”
Then Marianne—my teacher, my mirror—
looked at me,
front row, full room, silent breath—
and asked:
“How do you know your daughter’s path
isn’t to learn to live without her mother?
How do you know you’re the only teacher
your son is here to learn from?”
It cracked something open.
Fear slipped through.
And in its place—
breath.
Not the kind that begs to live,
but the kind that says yes
to whatever living is now.
That day, I was held—
by thoughts,
by prayers,
by the fierce softness of strangers
who chose love.
And I knew—
I knew—
I would live.
Maybe not forever,
but fully.
Because the art of dying well
is the art of loving wildly.
Of being grateful before goodbye.
Of not waiting
to become the woman I was born to be.
So I began again.
I wrote.
Painted with colors I never dared touch.
Tasted every mango like a hymn.
Walked barefoot—
not in rebellion,
but reverence.
I wore red again.
I wore me again.
Because death…
she is not an ending.
She is a threshold.
And I—
I have crossed many
with my eyes open.
I walked to death once—
not to greet her,
but to understand
why she lingers
in the corners of our mirrors.
I stood there—
ovaries emptied like a promise kept,
scars folded into my skin like sacred scripture—
and whispered,
“I’m still here.”
She didn’t take me.
She asked:
What do you vow now,
having brushed my lips
and lived to tell it?
And I vowed this:
To want—without apology.
To touch—with reverence and scandalous joy.
To let the light in
between silver strands of hair
and call it holy.
To burn in the flame of now
and laugh when the match burns low.
To lie naked in sunlight
without shame,
without angles—
just breath, and bone,
and soul unfurling.
To flirt with the unknown
like it’s an old lover
I never quite forgot.
To make love
like I’m made of time
and tenderness.
To kiss the mouths of fear
and say:
“Not yet.
I’ve got art to finish.”
I will not part from life
until life parts from me.
And even then—
I’ll leave the door cracked.
Just in case
someone needs to follow
the scent of jasmine and rebellion
I left behind.
Because death did not come to take me.
Death came to teach me.
How to empty.
How to listen.
How to let love do the healing.
And death—
sweet, silent teacher—
took my fear
like a lover takes your clothes—
gently,
as if it had always known
what lay underneath.
So no—
I have not parted from life.
I have married her
more deeply.
And if she asks again—
the dark one, the threshold-keeper—
I will greet her not with dread,
but with dance.
With mango on my breath,
paint under my nails,
pen in hand,
and every light in the house
left on.
Because the best
is not to dwell on it,
my mother would say,
brushing sunlight into glass,
her silver curls catching the morning.
Not dismissal—
but devotion.
A soft way of saying:
Live.
