Remember Me in Summer

Content warning: illness and end-of-life themes.

My dear old friend,

I’m sorry I’m writing instead of calling.

I know, I know. Very dramatic of me. Also very old-fashioned. And, considering I have never been especially good at writing letters, slightly reckless. You’d have laughed at the number of times I started this and crossed out the first line. Apparently there is no graceful way to begin a letter like this. I tried “How are you?” but that felt rude, since I’m not exactly leaving room for you to answer. I tried “I hope you’re well,” which sounded like something printed inside a sympathy card. Then I tried to be funny, which, as you know, is dangerous when I’m unsupervised.

So here I am, doing my best.

Hello, you.

I hope the day is kind to you when this finds you. I hope there is a cup of something warm nearby, or something cold if the weather is still behaving like summer. I hope you are sitting somewhere comfortable. And I hope, selfishly, that you will read this all the way through, even when you realise what it is.

Because if you’re reading this, I’m already gone.

I know, how dramatic right?

Before you do that thing where your face changes, listen to me. This is not meant to be a sad goodbye letter. Well, not only that. I’m not foolish enough to think I can write from beyond the grave and keep everyone cheerful. But I don’t want this to feel like winter closing in. I want it to feel like the last evening of summer, when the light is soft and golden and everything is ending, but beautifully.

I wanted to tell you about my final summer.

That sounds so grand, doesn’t it? Like I climbed mountains or swam with whales or kissed a stranger in Paris under fireworks. I did none of those things. I didn’t have the energy, for one. And for another, I discovered that when life grows very small, the ordinary world becomes enormous.

Just before summer began, I was told I had cancer. I won’t make you walk through all the details. There were appointments, and scans, and leaflets, the whole shabang. I remember nodding a lot, as if I were a sensible woman receiving sensible information, when really I was floating somewhere near the ceiling, looking down at myself and wondering how my hands still looked so normal.

That was the strangest part. Nothing changed and everything changed.

When I left the hospital that day, the sun was bright enough to make me squint. Someone was arguing into a phone near the car park. A bus sighed at the curb. A little boy dropped his popsicle on the pavement. The sky was blue and oddly clear. That make me feel some way. Not a single smudge or blemish in the perfect sky.

I remember thinking, How dare it?

Then, almost immediately, everyone began preparing me for death.

People were kind. People tried. But suddenly every conversation seemed to involve paperwork, passwords, schedules, treatment options, legal forms, blah blah blah.

But all I wanted was permission to keep living.

I wasn’t asking for a miracle, though of course I would gladly accept ant taht came my way. I just wanted someone to look at me and say, “You’re still here. Go on, then. Be here.”

For a few days, I did nothing useful. You’d have been proud of how dramatically useless I was. I lay in bed and mourned my future nonexistent self. The older me with silver in her hair. The me who complained about theri knees. The me who might have bought curtains and planted tomatoes and forgotten where they put their reading glasses. The me who might have grown softer, wiser, stranger. The me I thought I had decades to become.

I mourned future summers most of all.

After a while, crying became boring. One morning I woke up, stared at the ceiling, and realised I had a choice.

I could spend whatever time I had left waiting for death to arrive.

Or I could spend it chasing life.

You know me. I considered making a list. A proper list, with headings and little boxes to tick. I even wrote “Things to Do Before I Die” at the top of a page, which was so melodramatic I immediately had to put the pen down.

The trouble was, everything on a bucket list sounded too big. Too expensive. Too far away. Too much like trying to prove I had lived instead of actually living. I didn’t want to spend my last months in airports or queues or forcing wonder out of places just because they were famous.

So I made a different list.

- Eat ice cream.

- Go outside.

- Watch the sky.

- Say yes more often.

- Stop rushing.

- Let summer happen.

- That was it.

The first thing I did was buy an a huge sunday with a large cherry on top, because some pleasures should never be improved upon. I ate it in the sun and did not once think about calories or sugar. All those years I let tiny, joyless rules stand between me and happiness. As if happiness needed to be earned. As if a body must be negotiated with before it is allowed delight.

It melted down my wrist. I got chocolate on my sleeve. I laughed out loud at myself, and an elderly man on a bench smiled like we were sharing a joke. Maybe we were.

After that, I began taking evening walks.

I walked slowly. Pointlessly. I let other people overtake me. I stopped to look at flowers hanging over walls and cats judging me from patios. I noticed how the air changes just before dusk, how the heat loosens its grip, how the whole day seems to exhale.

You’d have laughed at how sentimental I became about sidewalks.

One evening there had been rain, and the ground smelled warm and green. The trees were dripping. Every leaf held a little bit of light. I stood under one of them for so long that a woman asked if I was lost. I said no, though maybe I was.

This illness sharpened my world.

I drove with the windows down because the weather was beautiful. I let my hair tangle. I played songs too loudly and sang badly on purpose, which as you know, is the only way I know how to sing. I took the long way home more than once, even though gas is so expensive.

I sat outside to watch sunsets with my cat purring in my lap. How many times had the sky set itself on fire while I was indoors answering emails or wiping counters or scrolling through nonsense I can’t even remember now?

Promise me you’ll watch them sometimes.

Not every day. But now and then, when the light goes gold, stop what you’re doing. Stand there. Let the world show off. It has been doing it all along, and we have been very rude guests.

There were family gatherings too. Messy ones. Loud ones. Someone brought the food, someone told the same story twice, someone got offended over nothing, and someone small ran around with sticky fingers touching furniture they should not touch. Before, I might have found parts of it irritating. This summer, I loved every chaotic second.

I laughed so hard one afternoon that my stomach hurt, and for one glorious moment the pain meant nothing except laughter. Can you understand what a gift that was? To hurt for a reason that wasn’t frightening?

I stored these moments like shells in my pocket.

Ice cream. Evening light. Bad singing. Smoke from a grill. Grass under bare feet. Children laughing in gardens. The smell of sun screen. The hum of insects. A glass sweating on a table.

Summer started to feel endless again.

Do you remember that feeling? Not a specific summer. I promised myself I wouldn’t trap you in our particular past. I mean the old feeling of it. The childhood belief that summer never ended, until you were forced to go back to school. Long days. Warm nights. Time stretching so wide you couldn’t see the edges.

Adulthood steals that slowly. One year summer is everything, and then somehow it becomes weather you pass through on your way to responsibilities. You still say things like “lovely day,” but you say them while looking for your keys. You still notice the sun, but mostly because it makes the car too hot. The season did not shrink. We did.

I think that may be the saddest thing I learned. Not that I was dying young, though obviously I had complaints about that. The greater tragedy was realising how much of my healthy life I had spent postponing joy. I had treated ordinary happiness as something small, something I could pick up later when the work was done, when the house was tidy, when I was thinner, richer, calmer, better.

Later is a dangerous word.

I don’t say that to frighten you. I say it because I love you, and because I am no longer in a position to be subtle. Stop saving your life for when you think you deserve it. You already do.

Of course, while I was busy becoming a wise and radiant creature of summer, there was still one thing I kept putting off.

I had to plan my funeral.

Even writing it now makes me want to make a joke, so I will: it turns out I am very opinionated for someone who will not technically be attending. You’d have laughed. I had thoughts about flowers. Strong thoughts. I had thoughts about music, food, clothing, seating, and the emotional risks of serving dry sandwiches to grieving people.

I dreaded it for weeks. I thought it would feel like surrender. Like signing my name at the bottom of defeat.

Once I sat down and began, it stopped being only about death. It became about memory. About atmosphere. About the last room I could arrange for the people I loved. I couldn’t choose how long I stayed, but I could choose what kind of warmth I left behind.

No white lilies. Absolutely not. I know they are traditional, but they always look to me as if they are trying too hard to be solemn. I chose sunflowers. Big, bright, shameless things. Flowers that look like they have swallowed the sun and are delighted about it.

For music, I chose songs that make people smile. Maybe cry a little, yes, but not in that heavy, grey way. I do not want everyone trapped in polite misery, listening to something sombre and pretending it is profound. Grief is already profound. It does not need help from an organ.

There will be proper food too. Please make sure of this. I refuse to send people away hungry. There should be things people actually want to eat, things that require napkins, things that encourage everyone to stay and talk. I want stories passed around with plates. I want someone to laugh too loudly and then feel guilty about it, and then I want you to tell them I would have loved that.

And color. Please, color.

If anyone arrives in black because it comforts them, let them. I’m not a tyrant. But I have asked for brightness. Summer dresses, loud shirts, blue, yellow, green, whatever people can bear. I want the room to look less like an ending and more like a garden that refused to give up.

Planning it made me think of something I had tried very hard not to think about.

When I was younger, I imagined planning a wedding one day.

I imagined choosing flowers. Music. Food. A room full of people I loved. I imagined standing at the beginning of something, nervous and happy, while everyone gathered to witness a life opening.

If I could not plan the day that marked the beginning of the life I imagined, I could still plan the day that honoured the life I had. I could still choose flowers. I could still choose music. I could still gather everyone I loved in one place. Not to celebrate what was coming next, but to celebrate what had been here.

And that, my dear friend, is why I am writing to you.

I need a favour.

I know grief makes people strange. Someone will say white flowers are more appropriate. Someone will worry the songs are too cheerful. Someone will whisper that colourful clothes feel disrespectful. Someone will suggest a more serious menu, as if sandwiches have moral authority.

Promise me you’ll stop them.

Tell them I chose every bit of it. Tell them I knew exactly what I was doing. Tell them I had enough darkness near the end and did not want any more than necessary. Tell them my farewell is not meant to feel like the first day of winter. It is meant to feel like the final evening of summer.

Warm. Bright. Tender. Full of people who don’t want to leave yet.

You are the person I trust with this. Not because you are the loudest or the sternest or the least likely to cry. Cry if you need to. Cry as much as you must. But when someone tries to make my goodbye smaller, greyer, more respectable, I need you to remember me as I was this summer: sticky with ice cream, sunburned on one shoulder, singing badly with the windows down, laughing in cold water, watching the sky as if it had been made just for me.

Protect that woman.

She worked hard to exist.

And after it’s over, don’t remember me only in that room.

Remember me in summer.

Remember me when your ice cream melts faster than you can eat it. Remember me when the evening light turns everything gold and you almost walk past without noticing. Remember me when children are laughing somewhere nearby and the air smells like cut grass or rain on warm pavement. Remember me when you drive with the windows down for no practical reason. Remember me when the sun touches your face and, for one second, you understand that being alive is not a small thing.

Promise me you’ll stop postponing joy.

Use the nice glass. Wear the weird color. Eat the thing. Go outside. Stay a bit longer. Watch the sunset even if you have dishes in the sink. Say yes when happiness offers itself in ordinary clothes. And when you catch yourself thinking there will always be another summer, be careful. There may be. I hope there are hundreds for you. I hope you grow old in the sun. But don’t let the hope of more make you careless with the one you’re standing in.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for being someone I could write to in my final days without pretending to be braver than I was. Thank you for understanding, even when I have not explained everything. Some love does not need a history written down to be real. Some friendships live in the space between words.

Please don’t cry for too long. I’d hate to ruin a beautiful day.

And if it isn’t beautiful, go and find one small beautiful thing anyway. A patch of light. A ridiculous flower. A song you forgot you loved. Start there.

I’ll be in all of it, I think.

Or at least, I hope you’ll feel me there.

With all my love,

Always