Thread by @PeterKaufmanSOC

What Do I Want to Do Before I Die?

Microburst Twitter Essay #7?

This is my last microburst Twitter essay and last Twitter posts. And most personal. I hope you enjoy them.
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What do you want to do before you die?
I’m sure someone has asked you that question before, right? It’s a fun, frivolous question that allows you to imagine all the wonderful possibilities that await you.
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For me, that question is neither fun nor frivolous; it’s a source of tremendous angst. You see, I have been living with stage four lung cancer for the past sixteen months and my treatment options are dwindling. Actually, they are pretty much done.
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I have just one thing I want to do before I die, just one thing, and my fear is that I won’t be able to cross it off my list before I die. In many ways, my inability to achieve this thing is creating more suffering than the cancer that is ravaging my body.
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So what do I want to do?
I don’t have any places I want to visit, foods I want to eat, books I want to read, people I want to meet, movies I want to see, or adventures I want to have. Yes, those are the typical things that that people mention but none of this interests me.
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Here’s what I want to do before I die:

I want to make sure, make absolutely sure, make totally foolproof sure, that when I’m gone the love of my life, my partner in love and friendship for 33 years, my Sweets, my Love,
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is going to find comfort, solace, equanimity, and loving and doting attention
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when she wakes up at night distressed and panicked from a bad dream; 
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when she comes home from school frazzled and frayed after another long day of giving all her love and attention to her students;
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when she gets an unappreciative and sometimes even demeaning email from a parent of a child she just went the extra mile for… again; 
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when she hears bad news, crushingly bad news, about a dear friend who lost a child, a neighbor who was in horrible car crash, or a co-worker whose husband has stage IV cancer;
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when she is creeped out after walking the dog alone at night because she saw that creepy guy again;
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when her nagging hip problems flare up and she worries that she may never get to run a marathon again;
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when feels a deep sense of loss and loneliness because her parents are gone and her siblings are distant; 
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when she has a cold, a stomach ache, a headache, the flu, or cancer;
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when she just feels down or anxious or grouchy or shitty, because sometimes people just feel down or anxious or grouchy or shitty;
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& when she misses me, or I really mean misses us, because as we always said to each other, ‘if I were just an I it would be more difficult to be me than when I am part of us,’ and when I’m gone, there will no longer be us so it will be incredibly difficult for her to be her. 
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That’s what I want to do before I die. 
 
And I know I won’t be able to do it.
 
And it’s killing me just like my cancer.
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That’s it.
As my 8 year old niece loves to say, “Peace Out!”
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