As developed from the thoughts I wrote the night before I underwent major surgery, knowing there was a very very small chance I might not survive.
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In the event that I do not wake up from surgery:
1) I have no plans to haunt anyone.
2) I did not kill myself. Surprising no one more than me, I fought it out to the bitter end. I did not cheat, or sabotage my surgeons. That would be a reasonable suspicion, but I did not plan to die. Luck.
3) If I ever told you I love you, then know I loved you, whole of heart. If I ever told you I love you, I promise you that I love you still.
4) To my miraculous four parents and my sisters and brother and niece. I love you deeply, though I’ve mostly done a poor job of showing it. Thank you so much for making my life better than I ever could have made it on my own rusty power.
5) I have told many lies. You will surely discover some of them once I am gone. I am sorry if any of them hurt. I did my best. I at least tried to never tell a lie to score a favor. Where I changed the truth, I meant it only to make the world look more full, more promising.
6) I did not elect to have surgery for cosmetic reasons. I am fat and proud. Things went damn squiggly in final years, to be sure, and I am hoping relief to some degree of my physical pain.
I have loved the things I have put in my body and I am grateful for all of them.
I have never, ever in any way sought to become more average.
I beg you not to use my huge beautiful corpse as evidence to shame anyone, least of all yourself.
If you do so, I will rescind my previous offer of no haunting.
This was not for vanity or conformity.
I swear to you, I did not give up my voice for some imaginary future love. I just wanted the fresh new legs.
7) Thank you so much for all the poetry.
Thank you for sharing your truth, no matter how clumsy.
Especially if it was clumsy.
Thank you for inspiring me to speak in my honest voice
after so many years trying to make it sound prettier.
8) Be good to my dog. Don’t let her feel alone. Make her wear sweaters, she needs them. Give her all the chew treats she wants. Don’t let her lick your face unless you ask her to. She knows better.
9) Pearl Jam, Ten (remastered), “Garden”
10) I’m with you in Rockland, where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter.
11) I have lived a very good life. The part of me that mourned without stopping was the louder but far smaller part of me.
I have had true and great adventures.
I have known true and immense love.
The world has been to me, above all, funny, in the best and most affirming ways. I’ve chosen solitude and almost always loved it, excepting only for when I didn’t. I’ve tried to be there fully for those whose time I shared. I am happy to be remembered as a fitful and melancholy soul, and I’m happy to be remembered with all my diagnoses intact, but my sadness was not a tragedy. It was a proud price I paid for a life lived without brakes.
12) Get the adverbs out of your writing. Find a stronger, more specific verb.
13) Don’t go around calling me by my legal first name (unless you are family or Lizzie or Claire, who came into my life in particular grateful ways and never had reason to know me otherwise.) My name is Doc. It has been for 25 years. It is silly and it is mine. Don’t try to clean me up after I am gone.
14) I do not have a plan to die, but if I do, it is a good time to do it. I am ready. I do not fear it. It’s okay. I am hopeful to stay and I am ready to go. I am in this now right now. I think maybe the reason it is so hard to forgive all the things we did not become is because we are always still becoming. I have kept becoming all the way until the last day. That’s how I wanted it.
