A Million Mundane Things

In Anchorage, Alaska, in a bare-assed house on 12th Ave, my auntie Alicia is dying of do-nothingcer. privileged the back-pack she puts on both(prenominal) morning, machines tick and purr, pumping nutrition into her veins and pain medications into her gut, where tumors macho-man her intestines. Her stomach has been removed. She has abandoned up the joy of food and tope, in favor of a little more(prenominal) time.Alicia is bony and twinkly in her heated pink pajamas, with her salt-and-pepper hobgoblin cut. Every day she puts on lipstick, flush when she is in the hospital, and every day, when she is home, she makes the bed.The house on 12th Ave is fair(a) a form old. She and my uncle had been in it ii months when she got the diagnosis. That was October. This is May. She is 58. Now, they say she has a few weeks.I was thither to visit her recently. In spring in Anchorage, brushstrokes of green reproach the tips of birch branches, and degree Celsius on the Chugach hun t down catches the cool pastels of immense sunsets. From Alicia’s revolutionary bedroom windows, at that place’s a panorama of mountains and sky, merely that is not what makes her weep. hot chocolate berry. Coffee makes her weep. That tradition of spooning turn up the beans in the flamboyant coffee spoon collected on a elusion to Hawaii. The grinder drowning protrude the radio news. The touch sensation of the brew as it hic cupfuls through the coffee maker. I distinguish her favorite pottery mug, I drive out imagine it make luxuriant with coffee and lightened with a little milk. On my visit, at eat time, she came unglued.“I can’t intrust I win’t be able to drink another cup of coffee,” she said, her voice melt with tears. “I discern manner so much, I wonder my husband. I spot my children. It doesn’t appear possible that I could die.” Later, I aphorism her pop up from her place on the couch to inanity, back pack and entirely. “A woman with cancer chooses to vacuum?’ I asked.“I like it, it’s what life is,” she told me. “ support is scarcely a million terrestrial things.”This evening, back in Portland, I sign on the dog for a passing after(prenominal) a unyielding day. The warm shadow smells of lilacs. I’ve just talked to Alicia on the phone. It’s been a cheeseparing day, she tells me, unseasonably warm. She met with Hospice in the yard, wearing her lax garden hat. An airplane’s lights momentum in the starlit sky. The dog moves across the grass in tiny bounces, her tags tinkle like unconnected bells. The night is gentle. Alicia is pacify here. I smack myself smile in the dark. This moment on the shadowy sidewalk is a undefiled moment. This I cerebrate: A life can lay out and end in the time it takes to walk a urban center block, and these million mundane things- the morning cup of coffee, the clean h ouse, the mall – these are all we’ve got.If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:

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